


upper west side

by ceruleanstorm



Series: she's god and I found her [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alcohol, Bad coping mechanisms, Chronic Pain, F/F, Healing, Modern AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, adora ends up her passenger, and catra curses a lot, being a millennial/gen z is terrible yall, bow and glimmer play matchmaker, bow is too good for any of us, catra ends up an uber driver, creative writer adora, glimmer has a bakery, mentions of child abuse, scorpia is a good mom friend, scorpia is running a studio for drag queens that's fun, slowish burn, tattoo artist catra, they're in their 20s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2019-09-07 09:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 189,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16851757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceruleanstorm/pseuds/ceruleanstorm
Summary: “Hey, maybe this is fate.”  “If this is fate, it’s stuck in effing traffic.”Uncertain about anything in her future, Catra’s spending her nights driving a car that’s she doesn’t even own as a Uber Driver, of all terrible ways to pay the bills, but as the days progress, it gets harder and harder to keep herself together, to keep her head out of her terrible past.24 year old Adora was supposed to be hot shot, supposed to be destined for nothing but success, but now her life is beginning to spiral. She’s working a terrible temp job in Upper Bright Moon till midnight only to get up at five in the morning working a shift in a cafe so her best friend’s dream doesn’t go under.And then one night she finds herself as a passenger in Catra’s car.





	1. no band-aids for the growing pains

**Author's Note:**

> "griffin mcelroy voice* I wanna talk about she-ra/catradora!
> 
> I knew She-Ra was going to be fantastic (take that gross old man haters) but I had no idea it was going to eat my life, But hey. Free dopamine is free dopamine. 
> 
> And catradora! I'm so used to giving and now my wlw ass gets to receive. (thank you noelle stevenson i'm having a wonderful time) So here's what I hope is a first fic of many!
> 
> some heads up before we begin: this fic is pretty raw. I talk about trauma pretty heavily (me, projecting, nah!) they are going to go into child abuse and death, including a suicide. but I feel the fic is more about healing for those things than anything else, and that's why I'm writing it.
> 
> for clarification: bright moon is like New York City in this. It's like it's replacement.

Bright Moon.  _ Ugh. _

Catra hated Bright Moon. Scratch that, she loathed this city and its blurry bright lights and aura of hope that edged her further into sensory overload as she sat, practically brooding like some super villain, in the darkness of her car. She couldn’t help but hate its stuck up citizens from the entrepreneurial millennials bleeding their parents money to all the ditzy tourists commenting on their much needed sabbaticals and experiences with AirBnB. She despised them in their fancy business suits, carrying those giant phones that were practically tablets (it took everything in Catra not to cackle everytime they have to “take this call” on their big ass cell phone that was one slip away from shattering into a million pieces, like she even cares if they’re on some business call while she drives, it means she can drown out their grating voices), and the next person that complained about their fourteen dollar vegan soy latte was gonna get their neck snapped.

With her obvious disdain for Bright Moon’s population of idiots, how Catra ended being their glorified taxi driver was completely beyond her. It was just another example of how life was completely out of her hands.

It just all happened so fast. Too fast. There was the fight at MegaMart - if you could even call it a fight because Catra had been in fights, and  _ that  _ was certainly not one- and subsequently getting fired. Then there was her attempt at drinking her fury away at that bar and getting into an actual real fight with that  _ stupid  _ blonde chick who had the audacity to insinuate Catra was trying to get with her gross boyfriend, who happened to have the flattest ass Catra had ever seen (She was beginning to believe she only beat that chick up because she’d believed Catra would be into  _ that _ ). Everything after getting thrown out of the bar was a blur in her memory; Catra couldn’t put the pieces of the following week together because she was either drunk or hungover, curled up in her fluffy white comforter wrapped around her burrito style, nursing whatever alcohol she could get her scrawny fingers on. But her conversation with Scorpia, specifically the one where Scorpia put her foot down, stuck out in her addled brain- even if the memory was faint and colored by the smell of tequila.

“Okay, look-” Scorpia’s voice was like Catra’s own nails on a chalkboard, and Catra clawed at her ears, rolling to the other side of her futon. “I love you kid,” That earned Scorpia a sarcastic groan. “But you can’t stay unemployed. I don’t think it’s good for you.”

Well  _ that  _ much was clear.

“Oh yeah? Who’s even gonna hire at me? Last time I checked,  _ no one  _ wants me. ” Catra hugged the bottle of tequila she’d been easing her migraine with closer.

This should of been the driving point that sent her roomate away. Catra had a bad record. Obviously. She’d just lost her last job on the notion that she was “temperamental, disobedient and violent.” What was she supposed to do? Throw her barren resume on the desk of her next boss with  _ that  _ as her first reference?  

Scorpia scoffed and reached over Catra’s limp body for the bottle, only to send Catra squirming away and swatting at the large manicured hands that gave the other woman such an advantage, hiding her treasure under her side and digging herself further under her blanket. “Hey, why don’t you work for Uber?”

“Uber? That dumb expensive car service thing?” Now it was the other girl’s turn to scoff from under the blanket. “As  _ if.  _ I’d rather work off the docks in effing Salineas.”

“Don’t you hate water?”

“That’s the _ point _ .” God, her head hurt  _ so _ bad.

“Baby Doll was telling me the other night that they make good money, and have flexible hours. His sister drives for them.” Suddenly the warmth of Catra’s comforter vanished, followed by the blinding light of the apartment, and Scorpia’s face was back in her fuzzy vision. Carta squeaked, shielding her eyes from the harsh light of the apartment. Then the older woman full on shoved her off the tequila and was now winning the fight in wrangling the bottle from Catra’s fingers.

“How are you so strong?” Catra hissed as the bottle was pulled away from her, her body listless now that the battle had been lost. So much for getting some sleep tonight. “You’re forgetting something important.”

Scorpia made a face, a cross between confusion and concern, as she inspected the low level of liquid in what an hour ago had been a full bottle.

“Huh? What’s that?”

“I don’t have a  _ fucking  _ car!” With what little agility she had left, Catra launched herself from the futon, straight at Scorpia to make one last swipe for the bottle.

“Language kiddo!” she dodged Catra’s sluggish attempt with ease. “Well, I can’t have you drinking any more of my good tequila, so if I get you a car, you’ll apply?”

“Ugh! For fuck’s sake- if I say yes, will you  _ finally _ be quiet?” Falling back to the comforter, Catra clamped her hands over her ears, her nails digging into soft skin. Most of the time Scorpia knew better when her head was murdering her, and her back was aching so bad she could only lie in a fetal position. And now it was looking like she’d be stuck like this for the next couple of hours, since she no longer had any alcohol and would have to wait for numbness that accompanied sleep.

“Yay!” Scorpia yelled in triumph, earning another hiss from a pissed Catra. “Oh right, quiet. Sorry.”

Catra planned on staying on that futon for the rest of her life, but of course her roommate had to completely destroy that plan. Scorpia talked one of her performers into lending Catra a car (at least to use in the evening), and yanked the girl from her pity nest, handed her her phone and said “You said you would apply, if I got a car, and look! I got a car!”

“Son of a bitch.”

So yeah, that’s how Catra ended up working her first night as an  _ freaking _ Uber Driver in Marshmallow's 2013 Toyota Camry, hunting upper Bright Moon - the Most Stuck Up City in the World - for equally stuck up passengers.

That was three weeks ago. Three weeks longer than Catra had expected to last in this stupid job. At least it hadn’t taken her long to figure the ropes, like how the Bright Mooners at night were slightly less annoying - emphasis on slightly- than those during the day. There was less chat about soy lattes well past nine pm. Focused on getting home and drained from a day of having their head up their rich asses, passengers were far less talkative and more likely to be using headphones. And that was ideal, but Catra’s favorites by far were the ones she just _knew_ were having affairs; she’d watch in the mirror as they slyly slipped off wedding rings and fiddled with their skirts or ties, and revel in the anxious and appalled looks in their wide eyes when she asked if “they were going anywhere fun.” Since they’d already paid her, she’d roll down the window as they walked into whatever fancy hotel had become their destination and yell with too much enjoyment “USE PROTECTION!”

Totally worth the crappy ratings.

Tonight, Catra was in the western part of Bright Moon, watching the red numbers on her dashboard change from 10:59 pm to 11:00.  _ Maybe I’ll get a cheater tonight. Might be why their so fucking late. Second thoughts, perhaps? That’d be fucking hysterical. _ West Bright Moon was composed of a bunch of stuffy looking office complexes, different from the shops and restaurants of downtown or the dazzling suburbia of the Eastern end, where she was usually lurking. But Baby Doll tipped Scorpia that there were lots of people needing transportation more West and Scorpia told her through a series of five voicemails, so Catra just let the car take her there tonight. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now she was parked by some business called Light Spinner Industries, the car on idle, because her supposed passenger was now officially twenty two minutes late.

“I hate Bright Moon,” grumbled Catra, for like the fourteenth time, her iron grip tightening on the steering wheel. She checked each window to see if they were coming once more before slumping defeatedly into her seat. “Stupid dumbass Bright Moon. What kind of fucking name for a city is  _ Bright Moon _ anyway?”

She let out a few more expletives before hitting her head on the steering wheel and letting it lie there. Already she could a feel a migraine creeping its way into the cells of her brain.  _ Of fucking course. That’s  _ just  _ what I need right now. _

Five more minutes went by. _That’s it! I’m out, this chick is on her freaking own!_ But right as Catra moved to turn the ignition, ready to call it quits and leave whatever stupid Bright Moon passenger needed a ride tonight in the dust, the back door flew open and Catra became victim to an impressive onslaught of apologies.

“I’m  _ so  _ sorry! I didn’t mean to keep you waiting, it’s just- ugh! Everything went wrong, and I couldn’t get the copier working and then I think I broke it?” Out of the corner of her eye, Catra watched a young woman slump into the back seat, her blonde hair flying out its ponytail. “And I knew you were out here, but it’s also a  _ really  _ expensive copier. I’m sorry I kept you waiting-”

“Dude it’s fine.” Catra waved her off. She wasn’t really in the mood to make conversation.  _ Why does this Bright Moon chick sound so familiar? Her voice is pretty damn cute though.  _ Out of curiosity, Catra looked into the rear view mirror to catch a glimpse of this frazzled girl. She looked to be about Catra’s age, but the girl was too busy waving her arms trying to get her stuff settled Catra couldn’t get a good look at her face. Despite her hate for the entrepuening type, this girl looked pretty damn good in that pant suit she was wearing. And that  _ voice.  _ Kinda irresistable.

Catra  _ wasn’t  _ supposed to flirt with her passengers, but this just seemed like too much fun. Besides, she was bored out her fucking mind at this point, so what was the harm in getting under this blonde’s skin?

Dual colored eyes caught sharp blue ones in the reflection, and that’s when Catra’s heart came to an abrupt stop.

“Thanks anyway, for waiting. I’m-”

“Adora?!”

-

Catra had been just shy of twelve years old when she finally understood the brutal lesson life had been trying to beat into her, that people were always going to walk out of her life without so much as a pitiful goodbye. Seldom would they look back, and never going to  _ come  _ back. If that was even an option. 

This was the truth Catra wore like a grotesque scar for last fourteen years. And now, now the person guilty of delivering the final blow, the final point in that bitter and excruciating lesson, was sitting in the back of her fucking car.

“Adora?!” Catra whirled around to face the other girl. Screaming her name in her face had definitely thrown off her polite rhythm, and the blonde jumped at the hostility, her face morphing from surprise to suspicion to realization in the matter of a millisecond.

_ Oh, _ it was Adora alright. Didn’t matter that Catra hadn’t seen her since they were eleven years old, and it looked like the last thirteen years had  _ definitely _ been good to her, but for God’s sake, she was still wearing her hair in that silly pony tail. Of course  _ Adora  _ would be the one out of the two of them to gain height and maybe even a little muscle.

Of course  _ Adora _ was the one that got to be drop dead gorgeous.

_ Holy shit, is she wearing makeup?  _ In the raw bright lights of the night, Catra could make out Adora wearing faint pink lipstick and eyeliner, and fucking blush, of all things. Wow, adoption had changed her. Time had changed her. This was the same girl who’d beat the shit out of other foster kids for stealing Catra’s food at the dinner table, challenge the older boys to arm wrestle matches and then  _ win,  _ and couldn’t name a Disney princess to save her life, now sitting her backseat wearing mascara and a gray pantsuit.

“Wait a second-  _ Catra?”  _ Adora breathed out, her eyes once again narrowing. “You're- you’re my Uber driver?”

All Catra could do was roll her eyes. “Surprised? That makes two of us. Miss me, Adora?”

“Oh my God, Catra, it’s you! It’s actually you! You’re here! You’re  _ okay- _ I thought, I thought I’d never see you again!” Adora practically shouted, her blue eyes gleaming with tears, the happiness in her voice obvious. The whole act was like a slap in the face.

Adora’s hand was Catra’s shoulder for half a second before she was violently shrugging it off.  _ We’re having  _ none  _ of that.  _ Choking down a mass of repressed agony to the pit of her stomach, Catra spit “Well whose fault is that?”

“Catra-” Adora’s voice fell. Catra chose to ignore the hurt look on her face, wiping the escaped tears off her cheeks, and put the car in gear.

“Is the address right?” Catra muttered into the strained silence.

“Huh?”

“I  _ said- _ ” Catra let her canines dig into her lip as she pulled the car away from the curb, “is the address you gave me right? 321 Spring Lane-”

“Yes it’s right-” Adora stuttered and then stopped, her mouth falling to a line, a clear indication Catra had succeeded in getting under her skin.

 _Jackpot. Now there’s the Adora I remember._ _Now maybe this new, shinier Adora will actually stay quiet and_ not _annoy me- that would be a nice change._

After all, those were Catra’s only two options right? Force herself to talk to Adora during this drive while fighting some hellish flashback on their time in that stupid orphanage or sit in silence, avoid Adora’s voice during this drive, and then  _ afterwards _ fight some hellish flashback of their time in the system… and every thing that followed.

Option two was preferable. But it was also not happening,  _ apparently. _

They maybe made it five minutes before Adora opened her dumb mouth. “So…”  _ Oh my fucking God, are you serious Adora?  _ “How’s life?”

Well that was definitely a different approach from before, but not one Catra couldn’t dodge.

“I’m driving for Uber, so… you take a guess.”  _ Also, how bout  _ don’t _ take a guess. _

“Oh.”

Oh was right.

“Is it fun?” asked Adora, and if Catra wasn’t going forty miles an hour with some truck riding her ass, she would have slammed on the damn breaks.  _ Oh, come on! _

“About as fun as eating glass,” she grumbled.

“Hmm.” In the rearview mirror, Catra saw Adora frown and turn to gaze out the window.  _ Fucking finally. _

And yet…

There was a part of Catra that was curious, curious to know how  _ Adora _ ended up wearing blush and navy blue heels, curious to know what the hell her life was like that she was breaking expensive printers, curious to know what had happened after twelve year old Adora had walked out that door and didn’t once look back. She despised that part of her because  _ why? _ There was no real point in knowing! Adora had  _ still _ walked out that door, had still left her to Mrs. Weaver’s wrath without so much as one phone call to see if Catra was alright. Adora was still going to get out of the car when Catra pulled up to her destination, and they’d be done with each other. This time forever.

_ So I might never get another chance,  _ Catra thought, letting out a long sigh _. Fuck it.  _ So what if curiosity killed the damn cat?

“So you broke a printer?” asked Catra. They were stalled at red light.

Adora stirred from the window, yawning. Something stirred in Catra’s chest at the sight. Like the arousal of a memory. “Printer? Oh no it was a copier, actually.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yeah kind of.” Adora snorted. Catra swallowed. “You know one, prints things, the other makes copies-”

“Okay, okay I get it.” Catra waved her off, trying- and failing- not to smile. “You know, for all your impressive knowledge of copiers, sounds like you  _ still _ broke it.”

The blonde threw her head back with a groan. “It’s not my fault that stupid thing has a mind of its own! One second it says it's low on toner, but when I come back with toner now it’s saying its jammed! Jammed in three different places! I didn’t even know it could be jammed in more than _one_ place! It was _asking_ to be kicked, Catra, asking! Ugh, my boss is gonna kill me!”

“You kicked the shit out of the copier? And nobody like, I dunno, came to put a stop to your rage?” Catra had to admit, the image of adult Adora fucking rage quitting and throwing herself at copier, pantsuit and all, was pretty god damn funny.

“It was just me tonight. All alone. They make me close, ugh. But at least I got to kick that damn copier as many times as I wanted.” explained Adora with a small smile.

Catra lifted an eyebrow, turning a corner. “What’s this place your working at again?” She’d already forgotten where she’d even picked Adora up.

“Uh, it’s called Light Spinner Industries. They’re a division of Mysticor Incorporated.” Adora told her. _Mm_ _ kay. Don’t know what that is either. _

“Gotta be honest, Adora, never thought you end up working in some cubicle.” Catra sent her look, and Adora rolled those ocean blue eyes of hers.

“I’m  _ temping _ , okay?”

“Cause that makes a world of difference.”

Another eye roll. “Trust me, this is  _ last  _ place I see myself staying. It’s just until I get… something off the ground.”

_ Cryptic,  _ one part of her thought.  _ Whatever,  _ said the other part.

“But…” sighed Adora, “between temping and student loans and working at the bakery, it looks like it’s never gonna get off the ground.”

This time Catra did slam on the brakes, earning a satisfying “son of a bitch, Catra!” from her passenger. “You’re working in a  _ fucking  _ bakery?” Catra practically cackled. She just couldn’t help herself.  _ First she’s in some cubicle, now she’s making wedding cakes and scones? Oh that’s fucking rich! _

“And what’s wrong with that?” sputtered Adora. “It’s belongs to my friend, okay Catra? She needed help cause it’s what she’s wanted to do her whole life, and she’s done so much for me- ugh why am I even telling you this? You’re just gonna make fun of me.”

"Yeah probably,” Catra shrugged.

By now, they were through downtown and had made it East, which meant that this painful conversation was, thankfully, almost at its end. Catra only had one question left; she wasn’t even going to bother with the loaded gun the other girl handed her with working at some bakery. She pulled into one the posh neighborhoods,  _ Whispering Woods,  _ the fancy ass sign read, and whispered “How’s Marie?”

“Marie?” Adora’s face contorted. “Who’s Marie?”

_ Fuck me!  _ “You know,” she waved one of her gloved hands around, the sound of heart drumming in her ears, “Marie… I forget what her name was it okay? I just remember it started with a M… you know, the chick who adopted you?”  _ And took you away from me. _

Adora’s eyes went wide before falling to her lap. “Mara.”

“Right. Mara. How’s Mara?”

“She…” Catra heard Adora take a deep breath, her eyes back on the road. “Actually Mara died when I was sixteen.”

“Holy shit, Adora.” Catra blurted out without thinking, feeling like she’d been kicked in the ribs. How was she supposed to bounce back from that? She knew that most functional people would go for something comforting but Catra had one move and one move only and that move was fucking sarcasm. Even she knew that was a bad, bad idea.

“Yeah, she was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer when I was like fifteen. That’s how I ended up in Bright Moon. We came here for treatment, but they said it was too late. She died a year later.” Adora’s voice was quiet, like she was far away, mentally somewhere else. Catra couldn’t blame her.

“Oh. Did you go back? You know, in the system?” They were reaching Spring Lane. They were reaching the end.

“Actually, one of Mara’s friends took me in. This wacky old lady, Razz. You would have really liked her. She was my guardian until I turned 18, but then she passed away when I was a sophomore in college. And that was, needless to say, my worst year in college.”

Catra blinked. “Wow.”

Memories of jealousy and anger returned to her in that moment, mixed with almost uncomfortable sympathy. When they were in the system together, none of the other kids knew death, not like Catra did. Maybe that’s why she pushed them away. Most of those kids had just been flat out abandoned and had never known anything but foster care. Only two or three kids had memories of their birth parents when they lived with Mrs. Weaver. Catra always found that unnerving, because that pattern didn’t follow when she was tossed from family to family later on, but once she was on her own, she never gave it one more thought. But Adora was different. Adora was a baby when she had brought to foster care. A miracle, Mrs. Weaver called her,  _ her  _ miracle, favoring Adora -for some wicked reason- over the others every chance she got. To this day, Catra believed that twisted bitch of a guardian would have kicked the rest of them all to the curb had she’d been given the chance to adopt Adora.

It could have easily played out that way. After all, Adora came from nowhere and she came from nothing, nobody. No birth certificate, no evidence of a living mother or father, no fight for custody from other family members. Adora’s was Weaver’s for the taking.

The blonde lady came out of nowhere. Mara. Catra’s memories of her were faint and blurry, but she did remember coming home from school one day, laughing because she had “tricked” Adora into giving her a piggyback ride home from school all by feigning exhaustion, and there she and Mrs. Weaver stood, screaming at each other in that hellish kitchen. Mara had a lawyer. Mara was going to take Weaver to court. Mara’s was Adora’s godmother. Mara was going to take Adora away.

And she did.

Catra hated Adora because Adora had everything when Catra had nothing. She had Mrs. Weaver’s love and affection; she had freedom from the pain Mrs. Weaver inflicted. Adora had a family, someone that wanted her, someone to fight for her. Adora had a future and it was bright and beautiful and full of happiness.

Up until this night, Catra believed all of that to be true, and over the years she let her hate for Adora slowly poison the way she’d loved her, until there was nothing left but ugly, destructive anger. Yeah sure, most of Catra’s assumptions held up. Adora was living in Bright Moon, one of the wealthiest cities on the country. She went to college  _ in  _ Bright Moon. She had a job where she got to beat the shit out of office equipment. She had friends who had done “so much” for her. But now Adora had seen death,  _ multiple _ times, and just when she believed she’d gotten her happy ending. It had changed her, and Catra couldn’t help but feel for that.

“You have arrived.” the soft automated voice of her phone’s GPS broke Catra’s train of thought.

“Uh, we’re here.” Catra squeaked. There was still a lot she was processing; she was surprised she didn’t straight drive up onto the sidewalk. At least she remembered to put the parking brake on. Marshmallow would have her head if anything happened to the car.  _ Hoooooooly shit. _

“Hmm? Oh yeah, home. Home.” Adora let out another sigh, and began to gather her things.

“Pretty nice place you got here.” mumbled Catra, leaning to see out her window. Adora’s home, a tall standing apartment fit snugly between identical buildings, set apart by pink curtains fluttering in the windows, a porch light illuminating the crimson brick and cement staircase leading to a cerulean blue door, was needless to say, a _lot_ nicer than the hellhole Catra was calling home at the moment. The longer she stared the worse the image resonated. Jealousy- that all too familiar suffocation emotion- began to fill that empty, aching place in her chest, filling her body with so much intensity it was almost enough to get drunk off of it. Catra looked away.

“It’s not mine. I mean, not solely mine. There’s  _ no _ way I’d be able to afford the rent. I have a few roommates, Bow and Glimmer. Glimmer’s the one with the bakery. ”

Catra just nodded, choosing to ignore the fact that she had friends named Bow and  _ Glimmer _ of all things, instead clutching the steering wheel with an iron grip. She caught a glimpse of her tattoo peeking out from under her glove.  _ Just get out of my car Adora,  _ she wanted to say,  _ just get out and don’t bother looking back. _

Except for some reason, Adora wasn’t leaving. The door was open, her seat belt was off and she had shouldered her backpack, but she stayed where she was, one heeled shoe hanging out of the car door. “Hey, you know it’s been awhile since I told someone about Mara and Razz that didn’t look at me with that…  _ really  _ annoying pity. So thank you, for that. And- and the ride. Five stars.”

“Yeah well,” Catra looked back at her, their eyes meeting in the quiet and dark of the car, “I know a thing or two about really annoying pity.”

When Adora smiled at her, Catra’s heart skipped a beat, and she hated herself for it, wondering if her black nails were sharp enough for her to claw the beating and betraying organ out her chest. “I’m glad I got to see you again, Catra.”

“Me too.” Did she mean that? Yeah, she meant it. But Catra hated herself for that too.

Adora finally got of the car after that. Looks like this was their last and final goodbye; it was almost giving her a strange sense of deja vu. Catra watched as she climbed the steps, snickering as she almost tripped on one.

_ Looks like she isn’t too used to walking in those freaking heels, maybe my Adora isn’t completely gone _ , she thought in the midst of her laughter.

She was about to put the car back into gear when she braved one last look at her old friend, only to be completely thrown by what she saw. Adora was waving, a big beautiful smile on her face, hanging out the door and watching Catra as she drove away.

Catra couldn’t believe it. She blinked intrusive tears out of her eyes, trying to focus on the blurry road and the long drive home she had ahead of her. But she just couldn’t.

Because this time, Adora had looked back.

_

It was a thirty minute drive from East Bright Moon to Catra’s apartment, and a thirty minute drive alone with her thoughts was  _ just  _ what she needed.

Not only was her head throbbing and pulsing angrily against her skull, the fuzzy lights reflecting into her car only making it worse, but her back was starting to ache with a white hot intensity. Catra struggled to keep her grip on the wheel, speeding through the lonely streets to get home faster.

That Bright Moon doctor- the one Scorpia lucked out with (none of them had health insurance) and found only because he thought her studio was a strip club (wow, was he sorely mistaken) and had dragged up to the apartment to see Catra- told her that the pain was a normal part of trauma. Trauma. She fucking  _ hated  _ that word. It made her feel weak, and weakness was a feeling she despised more than the jealousy or the anger or the loneliness. Because if the past 23 years had taught Catra anything, it was that she was anything  _ but  _ weak. But she supposed the doctor did have a point. The wrangled and deformed skin of her back meant her pain was localized, so when the flashback and nightmares came, the pain followed and went straight there. Seeing Adora tonight was digging up memories and emotions her body just wasn’t ready to deal with.

_ “Insolent child!”  _ Mrs. Weaver’s voice rang in her head as she sped down the road. Catra had hated so many things about that old ugly woman she couldn’t even begin to name them. She hated the cruelty she’d inflicted upon her when she’d done nothing to deserve it except act like every other kid acted, but the one thing Catra hated more than her first foster parent was that she remembered. Her subconscious remembered every  _ single _ detail about Mrs. Weaver: her mannerisms, the faces she’d made, her  _ voice. _

_ “You terrible disobedient girl! You did this!” _

Catra would forever remember the heat on her back, the scalding water burning the layers of skin away. In her memory, that moment lasted an eternity, echoes of the water heater quickly spinning losing control and Catra’s young screams echoing off the cement of floor, the sound of her anguish burned in her brain forever. The next thing her conscious could peace together was Adora’s face looking over her in the bright white ambulance, fearful, distraught, crying so hard her eyes were red and puffy. Adora never cried.

And she was  _ never _ scared.

_“It’s going to be okay.”_ In Catra’s memories, in her nightmares, Adora’s voice shook. The grip on her hand was ironclad. It was the only thing Catra could even feel. _“You’re going to be okay! Catra, please, please don’t leave me!”_

Pretty dramatic for an eleven year old, it was just a burn. Third degree burn, but still. _“Please don’t leave me!_ ” How ironic.

Young Adora’s sobs rang in Catra’s mind as she drove past the “Welcome to Bright Moon” sign. Catra’s foot slammed on the gas, finally free from the watchful eye of Bright Moon’s cops. Almost home.

Almost home.

_

“Oh hey! You’re back!” Scorpia’s voice met her as she slumped into through the front door, and Catra almost threw her head through the drywall. It was like one in the morning and she didn’t have any shows tonight, why wasn’t Scorpia sleeping? Why couldn’t the universe give Catra a fucking break for once? “How’d it go? Meet anyone interesting?”

Catra paused from removing her worn down combat boots.

_ “I’m glad I got to see you again Catra.” _

_ “Me too.” _

“Nope. Boring Bright Mooners, like usual, Scorpia.” she finished with her shoes, leaving them in the giant mountain of shoes by the door, and slid off her leather jacket, followed by her bra and left them where they fell on the floor, leaving only her frayed tank top. The less fabric on her back, the better.

“Why aren’t you in bed? You’re usually snoring like a fucking military tank this time of night.” Catra asked as she walked further into the apartment, heading for the kitchen.

The apartment was nothing special. Just the opposite, actually. It was a one bedroom that housed three people, so that was telling. An explosion of personal chaos; between Catra’s dirty clothes, drag queen get ups that didn’t belong to anyone that lived there, and spare parts from broken electronics. It had a kitchen, or more like half of one, that hadn’t been redone since the place was built in the eighties, so the doors to the cupboards were unhinged and the mustard tiles that served as a poor backsplash were completely falling off. They did have a working microwave and ancient fridge, as well as a toaster oven that cooked at twice the normal speed, because Entrapta- Catra’s third roommate- was always taking them apart and putting them back together again. She’s was technical like that. Besides Scorpia’s room and their purple hair dye stained bathroom they all shared with a family of roaches, there was a living room with a worn fold-out couch and TV, where Scopria was currently sitting cross legged. Catra’s bed had been shoved in the corner, where two large windows met looking out on a sea of bright amber lights, some from Bright Moon, some from the little hellhole on the edge of Bright Moon. She chose that spot for her bed because there was no way she was sharing a room with snoring machine Scorpia, but also because she liked to perch herself on the edge of the bed, practically on the windowsill, and watch the city. It was a sufficient distraction. Scorpia always said it fit her namesake.

“Entrapta fixed the TV!” shouted Scorpia. She had her eyes glued to a rerun of  _ Cheers.  _ Yikes.

“The TV  _ wasn’t  _ broken!” Catra threw her hands up and headed for the kitchen.

“It was this morning remember? Oh yeah, you were asleep.”

Grunting, Catra whipped open the fridge. “Was Entrapta the one who broke it?” She already knew the answer.

“Yeah duh, Catra. But luckily she fixed it before her shift and now we’re getting a whole bunch of new channels!” Scorpia practically squealed.

“Whop-di-doo.”

“C’mon Catra, don’t be like that!” Scorpia called back as Catra used her sharp nails to rip off the lid of some leftover mac-n-cheese. “I mean, it’s better than only getting those telenovelas. You were the only one that could understand those.”

Catra took violently to the mac-n-cheese with a fork. “Doesn’t mean I ever watched them.”

"You actually just missed it, they were playing reruns of  _ That 70’s Show.” _

“They have  _ That 70’s show? _ ” she perked up, her mouth full of food. “ _ Fucking  _ sweet.” Scorpia turned back to the TV, talking still, but Catra had drowned her out. Before she knew it, her dinner was gone. She tossed the tupperware into the leaking sink with the flick of her wrist and turned to the cabinet where Scorpia “hid” the liquor, only to be met with disappointment.

“Uh Scorpia?” she called out, “Where’s the tequila?” What had once been full of Catra’s one way ticket to a painless slumber, was now full of off brand water bottles. From MegaMart of all places.  

“I threw it out.”

“You  _ what?” _ With a surge of adrenaline that surpassed the pain, Catra leapt onto the couch to stare down the other woman.

“I threw it out! It’s bad for you Catra! Dr. Newman said it wasn’t a good coping mechanism-”

“Who gives a  _ flying fuck  _ what that know-it-all shithead thinks-” Catra screamed, right up until she saw the hurt look on the older woman’s face. Ugh, she had no right to take this out on Scorpia. Scorpia was odd and most of the time annoying, but she cared enough to take Catra in when she had no place to go. Taking a shaky breath, Catra started over “Scorpia my head is  _ killing _ me, what am I supposed to do?”

“Well it’s probably cause you’re not drinking enough water!” Scorpia replied. Her earnest attitude was disgusting. “And I put water in the cabinet, so-”

“How am I supposed to  _ sleep? _ ” Because all the water in the world wasn’t going to change the fact that Catra couldn’t out run her migraines. The pain in her back may have been from her childhood, but the pain in her head was a parting genetic gift from her long dead birth mother.  _ Thanks for  _ nothing,  _ Mom. _

“Mmm, that’s good question. You know, I think Entrapta drinks those Monster energy drinks when she wants to sleep.” Scorpia shrugged.

Catra let out a groan and slid off the couch. “Yeah, you’re making that up. I’ve never seen Entrapta sleep in my entire life. That’s it, I’m gonna go break into Señora Rodriguez’s place and steal some of her sleeping pills.”

“Steal her- No! She’s a nice old lady and a great neighbor and stealing is  _ wrong. _ ” Catra barely dodged Scorpia’s attempt to pull her back to the couch as she struggled to stand up.

“I’m kidding! Jesus Scropia, you really thought I was serious? She just lets me have some when I really need them, like when  _ someone  _ throws out all the alcohol, since I’m the only one who can communicate with her anyway.” grumbled Catra.  _ Guess not all the things you left me with are bad, Mom.  _ Her legs wobbling from the pain, she made her way back to the front door, waving off Scorpia’s loud goodbye.

_ I hate everything. _

Upon making it back from their elderly neighbor’s apartment, three white sleeping pills in hand, Catra was met with a dark apartment. The noise from the TV had been replaced by Scorpia’s snoring.  _ Finally some quiet!  _ Catra breathed a sigh of relief and popped the pills.

She knew she had a night of nightmares ahead of her, but rough sleep was better than none at all. Her fate had been sealed the second Adora pulled up the Uber app on her phone. “God  _ dammit _ Adora” she shouted at the empty apartment. “I never asked you to show back up. But you never ever listen, do you?” Catra asked as she approached her own tired reflection in the window. One gold iris and one blue hovered over the horizon of Bright Moon.  

“You’re probably in your nice fancy apartment, with your friends,” Catra gagged, running a shaky hand through her wild hair. “And then you’ll go work in that dumb bakery, go to your dumb temp job in that hot pant suit of yours, which I hate to admit, you look fucking sexy in, and  _ I’ll  _ make sure to never drive in West Bright Moon ever  _ again. _ ”

Catra’s knees went weak, the pain having spread to every limb of her exhausted body, but when she crumbled she missed her bed and hit the rough carpet with a yelp. Only then did she spot the box under her bed. That box, stuffed underneath with all the rest of her belongings, held everything from her childhood- everything that was left anyway.  _ Fuck me, what good timing you have. _ With a grunt, Catra dug it out and whisked the top off. And there it was.

A little stuffed kitten, small enough to fit in Catra’s palm, worn and weathered from years of use, sitting on top. It’s tiny glass eyes looked up at Catra, almostly pleadingly.

“Don’t give me that look.” she practically hissed at, but still she moved it gently away, unable to misuse her childhood friend. The  _ real _ treasure was hidden under Whiskers. Catra pulled it out and brought it up to the light filtering in through the window. It was a photograph, the only one that survived her purge of physical evidence of her years in that house, of her and Adora. They were ten years old, each sitting on one of Santa Claus’ legs, excited to be like the normal kids who got to go to the mall, excited to be there with each other. Mrs. Weaver took all the kids in the house to see Santa that year. Must have been feeling particularly merciful that year. It was the first time any of them had been; it would also be the last. Catra could remember Kyle bursting into tears when Santa asked him what he wanted despite being nine years old. Catra and Lonnie had laughed at him so hard they were almost crying, while Rogelio and Adora calmed him down. The other kids asked Santa for someone to adopt them, but not Catra’s best friend. Adora looked fake Santa right in the eye and asked for a fucking sword. Then mall Santa and his elves bought them all pretzels upon finding out they were from an orphanage, and Catra  _ loved _ that because Mrs. Weaver  _ loathed  _ it.

“Hey Adora, what the hell happened to us?” she asked the photograph. In that moment they were so carefree and happy. “You go one way, I go the other, and then for some stupid reason you just  _ had _ to take an Uber tonight? Here I was, thinking it was for the best. And then you show up! Honestly? Fuck you.” Hugging her knees, Catra let out a long, frustrated sigh. It had just been so much easier to let her hate control her when she didn’t have to confront the subject of her hatred. “Whatever. At least we’ll both be having nightmares about dead mothers and abusive deadbeat foster parents.”

Climbing into bed, Catra decided she was done with Adora. Sleep was way more important anyway. She threw her phone on the charger and curled into her comforter, hugging her chest to her knees, begging her mind to let her go to sleep, all she wanted was some rest. Except all she could picture when she closed her eyes was that pretty smile, wisps of blonde hair escaping that stupid ponytail, and those stupid blue eyes looking back at Catra in the rearview mirror.

And then her phone buzzed.

Catra jumped five feet in the air at the sound, and that was  _ just  _ what her head needed.  _ Now fucking what? _

“I swear to God Entrapta if you’re calling because you hacked the MegaMart Corporate system  _ again _ I’m going to force you to drink a Monster and then while you’re asleep, shave all your stupid purple hair off-” she cut herself off when she saw that the notification was  _ not  _ from her friend working the nightshift at that stupid store, but from the Uber App. Someone had left a review. At  _ two in the morning.  _ A five star rating, nonetheless.

_ “Awesome experience! 11/10 would drive with again!” -Adora R. _

Catra’s outburst was loud enough to wake up the entire apartment complex. “Oh  _ come  _ on!”


	2. every time I don't, I almost do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this is healing, why does it hurt?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooooooooooly crap! you guys! the feed back for this fic has blown my mind! You guys are incredible with your comments! In fact for a moment I was completely panicking like "oh shit i've given them standards!" Needless to say, I did not expect it to do as well as it did, and I'm so grateful for everyone who took their time to read it. To those who gave kudos, love you so much! To those who commented, just know that read every one and would literally freak out each time! you guys are catching little things and it's just motivated me to sit down and write.
> 
> I hope this chapter was worth that wait!
> 
> heads up: this is chapter that talks about a suicide. also some mentions of workplace harrassment.

Catra ended up back on the west side of Bright Moon fifteen days after Adora ended up in her backseat.

Adamant as she was to stay the  _ hell  _ away from the business sector of that stupid sparkling city, that’s right where she ended up.

“I’m _not_ going to see Adora,” she told herself as she started Marshmallow's car, the twentieth time she’d grumbled since throwing on her boots and stomping down the rickety stairs of the apartment complex. “I’m going because that’s where there’s business and Entrapta forgot to pay the stupid water bill!”

Entrapta hadn’t forgotten to pay anything.

Even if Entrapta  _ had _ been in charge of their combined sum of money, she had her… unique ways of keeping track of things between her recorder and the cellphone she programmed to somehow never run out of juice (Entrapta couldn’t do that for Catra’s phone, too busy “experimenting” with viruses on Catra’s piece of shit laptop). Even if she had forgotten, Scorpia would’ve come in to save the day. Scorpia had money, and more importantly  _ sense,  _ even if it didn't seem that way when you first met her _.  _ Or after three years of knowing her. Thank God at least one of their scrappy trio had their head on straight.

It had been that way since day one at MegaMart; Scorpia, the assistant manager, looked after Catra and Entrapta, even when Catra pushed her away and insisted she needed no one despite the fact she was as close as she’d ever been to being evicted. She helped them with bills or debt, and even paid for Catra to take a class at one of Bright Moon’s community colleges. She did so behind Catra’s back, and when Catra found out, needless to say they didn’t speak for months. Catra dropped out without second thought. Hated herself for it  _ to this day.  _  She was good at that, acting on emotion alone, and then regretting it for the rest of time. But even from day one Scorpia had one foot out MegaMart’s automated doors, or so she said. No one believed that this dream of opening a club/studio for Drag Queens was anything other than talk, even if she only talked about it every chance she got. Catra never bought it for even a second. Like any of them were getting out of that damn store. Then came the day Scorpia stunned them all when she told their manager Glen she had gotten her studio, and was officially turning in her two weeks.

Her club made money, a shitload of it. Catra  _ knew  _ it did. Scorpia dragged her down to plenty of the shows and Catra had seen the packed audience, probably could’ve crowd surfed on it. Why Scorpia was still crashing in their apartment when it was probably leaking with asbestos was beyond Catra’s introspection. Scorpia just shrugged it off like it was nothing when Catra brought it up.

“Well my bed is here.”

“You can move your bed. That’s not hard, you’re fucking jacked. Can’t you bench press like 200?”

“250.” Catra just rolled her eyes at Scorpia’s response. “Besides, if I help with rent, you can save for apprenticeship at a real parlor!”

“No one calls them parlors anymore, Scorpia.”

“Oh! Yeah, that makes sense.”

_ Catra  _ was the one who had forgotten to pay the water bill. Except she didn’t want to admit that she forgot, so in her head she assigned the blame to some harmless figure. One of her more refined talents.

Because all Catra could think about was stupid,  _ aggravating  _ Adora and it was starting to get in the way of her functioning like an actual human being. Her mind would go back to that night with Adora in her backseat, like it was being called there. Adora’s voice, her laugh, the sadness and regret in those fucking gorgeous eyes of hers. It was those stupid blue eyes of hers that Catra was busy despising _ \-  _ not liked, she  _ didn’t  _ like Adora! and she  _ never  _ would! - when she accidentally set the microwave on fire.  _ That  _ was a fun afternoon. Catra loved fire as much as the next dysfunctional kid from the street did, but what she did  _ not  _ enjoy was Scorpia assaulting every inch of her to see if she was hurt. At least Entrapta had a new project to keep her busy. Until then, they’d be eating toast and cold spaghettios. And on top of that, they’d be showering at Señora Rodriguez’s, and that was all on Catra.  _ No,  _ she wanted to scream,  _ it’s on Adora!  _

Every passenger Catra picked up in Bright Moon somehow looked like the other girl, and it helped  _ nothing _ . And it didn’t even make any sense! They didn’t resemble her in any way, but somehow they all reminded Catra of Adora. That redheaded twink that spent the whole ride bitching about some hair salon reminded her of Adora’s copier rage. That one mom of three kids (who was so exhausted she  _ forgot  _ one of them in the car) just because she kept yawning. Even that pirate looking dude with his hipster handlebar mustache - that he pointed out seventeen too many times - reminded her of Adora because well, he was just fucking annoying. Catra wasn’t sure what about that made her want to knock the lights out of him more, the ridiculous mustache, or the fact that it had been  _ nine  _ days since that night and she was  _ still  _ thinking about Adora!

_What? I am like_ hoping _one of the will be Adora? Jesus fucking Christ, I_ don’t _want to see her again!_ But as the days went by, Catra believed her stubbornness on the subject less and less. And everyday, she drove a little closer to the west side of the city.

It didn’t help that she wasn’t sleeping either. Between the flashbacks and the rampant nightmares, not to mention the pain that was anything if not persistent, Catra was begging whatever God existed to just take the shot and make her a damn insomniac because she was tired of tossing and turning or bolting awake from lucid nightmares every five or six hours. Or at least for this supposed God to bless her with some freaking tequila. Or put her in a coma. One of the three.

“I  _ don’t _ want to see Adora.” she grumbled to her empty car as she wandered the streets of the west side. It was approaching 10:30 pm and she’d gone the whole night without a single passenger, wandering around the business sector like a tiger on the prowl. “Could live my whole fucking life without ever seeing Adora again.”

She’d ignored five ride requests in the last hour alone.

“Ugh! So fucking what if I want to see her again? Dr. Newman said this was only going to end if I get closure, whatever the hell  _ that  _ actually is! And it’s not like I give a shit about seeing Mrs. Weaver or Hordak again, and it’s not like I’m ever going to!” Actually, she wasn’t so sure about that. But it was a hell of a lot more comforting to pretend she’d never have to face those monsters again. Right? “So yeah, I want to yell at Adora! I wanna scream my effing head off! She deserves it anyway!” Catra punched the steering wheel, and the sound of the horn resonated so loud it set off several car alarms.

Perfect, beautiful Adora. Who got everything… except when she didn’t.

At 11:13 a ride request from  _ Light Spinner Industries  _ lit up Catra’s cracked phone screen.  _ Sweet. _

As Catra pulled up to the building, going five miles an hour so she could stare and growl and judge, Adora was pacing up and down the sidewalk, swinging her purple Jansport backpack up and down. Her walking had evened out, so she must’ve been getting used to the heels. This time the suit was a light tangerine, adorned with a silver belt.  _ It looks dumber every time.  _  “Is she… is she talking to herself?”  _ Oh Adora… that’s pathetic. _

And yeah, Catra knew that was some backwards ass judgement when twenty minutes ago she’d been screaming at nothing so violently and loudly enough that a Bright Moon cop flagged her down and made her get out of the car just to ask if everything was alright.

Rolling the window down, Catra licked her incisors and interrupted her monologue with the first thing that came to her brain, “Hey Adora.”

_ Hey Adora? Mother of God, what the  _ fuck _ is wrong with me? _

“Catra!” Adora’s face lit up with that irritating smile of hers and she darted towards the backdoor. “I was really hoping you’d be my driver again! I’ve had the same couple of drivers for the last few days and it’s just been ughhhh! They always,  _ always _ hit on me.”

_ And I didn’t? _

“They’re like these gross old men in their sixties. I was pretty close to just switching to Lyft, but I didn’t think it’d be any better. So yeah, you’re a good change. A really good change.”

“Same address?” asked Catra. Adora threw her seatbelt on and sent her a thumbs up. Catra almost choked on her laughter. As much energy as Catra threw at being angry with Adora in the past two weeks, it was proving difficult to maintain that energy right now. The Adora she always imagined yelling was never wearing a tangerine pantsuit. “You’re a giant dork, you know that?”

Adora’s response was dry, even though Catra knew from her reflection in the mirror she was still smiling. “Ha ha.”

“So did you break anymore copiers tonight?”

“God, I wanted to. And by copiers, I mean someone’s face.” Adora muttered and crossed her arms before slouching in the seat. Catra blinked, a strange and uncomfortable nostalgia flooding her veins at the sight, because she might as well have gone back in time.

Young Adora could pout up a storm. When teachers didn’t call on her class, when boys refused to let her be on their stupid sports team at recess (that’s probably the only reason she’d play with Catra instead), when Lonnie stole her rainbow scrunchie and used it as part of a makeover she and Rogelio were giving Kyle.

Yeah, other kids grew up with Nintendo Wii’s and trampolines. In Weaver’s orphanage, they just passed the time by picking on Kyle.

Catra stole the scrunchie back right off Kyle’s sensitive head by pouncing on him from one of the upper bunk beds. Adora’s happiness was totally worth Weaver’s scolding, plus later she snuck her a bag of goldfish when that old hag took away Catra’s dinner privileges. They were what, like eight or nine at the time? Jesus. Seeing Adora make the same exact face, down to her wiggled nose, that she’d made right after Lonnie yanked the scrunchie right out of her ponytail in her rearview mirror made Catra feel like it had only been yesterday.

_ Aren’t we supposed to mad at her?  _ A voice in her head whispered.  _ Let me have my fun! We’ll get there!  _ Another part of her screamed.

Catra sent her a look. “Adora, you don’t really seem like the type to be breaking faces. And definitely  _ not  _ in that clown suite.”

“Oh please, I could kick ass in this outfit! Of course it wouldn’t be practical for fighting, but I could do it! And I can still break faces, Catra. It’s kind of my M.O. I think you’re forgetting the time I beat the crap out of that Mormon kid when we were 11.” Adora rolled her eyes, flashing a pretty smile in the midst of her victory.

Catra didn’t remember  _ that _ at all but she would've paid to have seen it. There were other, more memorable, things about foster care that her memory chose to preserve instead. “Okay, he probably deserved it if he was Mormon I’ll give you that, but why the fuck did you beat him up?”

“He uh, he made fun of your eyes. Said God didn’t love you or something gross like that.” Adora’s voice fell and an uncomfortable silence followed, because Adora understood.

Catra had been “that two eyed freak” her whole life. At sixteen it changed to “two eyed bitch” mostly cause she’d throttle anyone for even looking at her wrong, so the bitch part was probably appropriate. If they dared come for her eyes, she’d go for their throat. At 24, Catra no longer cared what people said about her dumb heterochromia. She liked to think her skin was a lot fucking thicker than that.

“So I beat the shit out of him and he cried all the way home to his mom because he got beat up by a girl.”

“Oh Adora.” Catra couldn’t help but chuckle. Protective as always, right up until it  _ actually  _ mattered. “So did you break someone’s face tonight? In your clown suite?”

“Well I want to keep working there, so no Catra, I didn’t.” Adora laughed, sarcasm leaking out of her voice. It was kind of hot, and just the thought of Adora speaking to Catra like that had her squirming in her seat.

“Hey,” squeaked Catra, “last time I checked, being the smartass was  _ my _ job.”

The blonde lifted an eyebrow. “So then why am I better at it?”

Catra never did tell Marshmallow, but that night going 50 miles an hour down some Bright Moon road, she came dangerously close to crashing their car because  _ that  _ came out of Adora’s mouth.  _ Jesus Mother Fucking Christ!  _ Swerving back to the center of the lane, Catra clamped her jaw and flipped Adora off as her passenger doubled over with laughter. “That  _ wasn’t _ funny!”

“You should have seen your face!”

“I’m about to come back there and kick your ass, Adora!”

Dangerously close to crashing the car, dangerously close to flirting.  _ Stay in your damn lane, Catra! _

_

Driving in Bright Moon was nothing short of nightmare. And that was saying something, considering the junkyard neighborhoods Catra grew up in and the crumbling concrete hazards she learned to drive  _ stick _ on. 

But in Bright Moon, this glittering city of pretentious assholes, everything had to be new and shiny and perfect. That’s why the fine for littering was close to two grand, last time Catra heard. These kids were so rich they threw their trash on the ground anyway. It was also why city officials were always tearing down buildings every twenty something years to erect new ones and ripped up functioning roads that were  _ perfectly fine. _ These were the smoothest roads Catra had ever driven on. (Because she was bored, she’d started counting the rare potholes - four so far - in her trips around the city, and she reveled in driving over them on purpose so these baby CEOs could get a taste of what it was like on  _ her  _ side of the line.) Construction in Bright Moon was as rampant as their terrible taste in everything.

It was only ever happened at night, of course. Can’t get in the way of the precious citizens are their pointless lives, can we? So from 11 pm to 6 am the constructions crews and equipment came out to work on the empty streets as a big fuck you to those driving at night.

And yeah, Catra knew that deciding to drive solely in the evening came with its own pros and cons, but she chose to accept the whole package because it meant she could sleep in until two in the afternoon (and since the quality of her sleep was never short of just plain shitty, sleeping in as long as she manage while Entrapta experimented with blow torches in their bathroom was Catra’s best bet). However, it didn’t mean that she was going to keep from complaining about it the whole damn time. That was the fun part anyway.

“Oh God,” groaned Catra upon catching sight of the telltale reflective gear of construction workers.

Five weeks into this job, she knew how to work around the roadblocks and annoying orange cones. It hadn’t taken long to learn how to communicate with the truck drivers either; after all, this late into night her tiny Toyota would almost always be sandwiched between their eighteen wheelers. But what Catra hadn’t factored in was being in the car  _ with _ Adora. A wave of anxiety came over her as she realized what the line of orange cones meant.

Earlier all she could think about was how much she wanted to go off on the girl who had abandoned her, how Adora deserved nothing more than to have her ass handed to her by the very person who dared to worship the ground she walked on. But now it was like the words she’d be rehearsing for thirteen years, the mantra she’d memorized on those nights she’d cried herself to sleep alone, had escaped her. Like they’d never been there at all.

Looks like the cat had her tongue.

And now she was stuck in a chaotic construction traffic jam with Adora for an indefinite amount of time. It really was  _ just  _ lining up for Catra tonight.

_ Fuck! Me! _

“Everything okay?” Adora asked once the car had stalled and Catra groaned once more for dramatic measure. Adora had been browsing her phone since the near accident her sass had caused; Catra knew because she could see the glow lighting up the blonde’s triumphant grin in her peripheral vision.

Catra slumped in the seat. “They’re doing construction on this stupid road. I think we’re going down to one lane, or something?” she glanced down at the map on her phone only to be met with the red line of doom, groaning again. “Yeah, we’re gonna be here for a while, so get comfortable Princess.”

“Did… you just call me a princess?” scoffed Adora.  _ Aww, she’s offended. How cute. _

“Hey, you were the one who showed up in that suit.” Catra said, gesturing backwards to Adora’s outfit, holding back an obnoxious laugh. The suit was pretty terrible even with Adora’s gorgeous defined figure, yet with every look she ventured to take at the blonde, she she was starting to think it might be growing on her. Key word being  _ might _ .

Wincing, Adora’s head fell. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?”

“Adora, it’s an atrocity to God. No offense, but you look like a sad mandarin orange threw up on you.”

“Come on Catra, that was uncalled for!” Adora clenched her fists and blew the stray hairs out her face. She kind of reminded Catra of an angry unicorn, which was about the farthest thing from threatening.

Catra threw her head back snickering. “Oh it was  _ completely  _ called for Princess.”

“Ugh I knew it! I knew it was terrible, but I have  _ no  _ idea what I’m doing and the office is like “We have a high standards  _ and  _ a dress code, Adora!”’ Catra snorted, glancing at her black nails. Adora’s impression of her white collar boss was sounding more like a canary. “‘You need to wear heels cause we like objectifying women’s asses!’ I’ve never worn heels in my life, Catra!”

“Yeah and it’s not  _ obvious  _ at all.”

Adora didn’t even bother with her sarcasm. “And then Glimmer’s mom was saying she’d pay for the clothes and how was I supposed to say no? It’s not like I have any money! So I let her but that also meant she chose the clothes. So now I have three terrible pantsuits that I just rotate every night! God, I look like a lesbian Hillary Clinton. But with worse fashion taste!”

“Hey you said it, not me!” Catra thought her reply was sly, but in reality she was laughing so hard her body had completely surpassed making any sound.

“And stupid Chad is all ‘Adora, the mustard is supposed to go on your sandwich not your blouse.’ Gah, I want to punch him until he bleeds.” Catra could practically hear Adora seething.  _ Punching his lights out. Okay, I get that. _

“Thought you wanted to keep working there, Adora.” Catra reminded her, shoving her own words back in her face with just a hint of smugness.

“I do…and I don’t. I hate it there!” she threw her face in her hands, but then Catra watched in the dim light as her fingers spread and her eyes went wide. “I’ve never said that out loud. I said it out loud… Oh God, I hate it there.”

At this point, Catra was so lost. Two seconds ago Adora was going on about her ugly expensive clothes. (Why did people with money have such bad taste?) And now they were here somehow.  _ So what if she hates her job? Welcome to reality, guess what? It sucks.  _  Traffic hadn’t moved an inch, and neither had Catra’s understanding of whatever the hell Adora was wasting her nights doing.

“What difference does that make?”

“I dunno, I guess it doesn’t matter.” Adora let out a long sigh and Catra felt a twinge of sympathy.  _ Well. Hate that.  Make it stop  _ this  _ second.  _ “I just thought this was a good alternative. A way I could start paying off some of my debt cause between student loans and the hospital bill I still haven’t paid off, I’m drowning. Getting this job gave me, I dunno, hope?”  _ Gross.  _ “And then my first day was a disaster. I spilled coffee on this box of important files and gross Chad grabbed my ass-”

“And you didn’t cut his dick off right then and there?” Catra whirled around with wide eyes. Catra lived on the streets and worked at a grocery store for three years; half the fun of that kind of life was getting to see the fear in her assaulters eyes as she held her pocket knife to their jugular, having pounced on them like a fucking panther the second they laid one of their disgusting hands on her tits.  _ Jesus, I have issues. No wonder MegaMart fired me. Kinda surprised they didn’t pull the trigger  _ a lot _ sooner. _

“Does slamming his face into my computer keyboard by his stupid man bun and kneeing him in the stomach count?”

Catra whipped around and gave the other girl a high five. “ _ Fuck  _ yeah it does!”

_ That  _ was the Adora Catra knew. Not the one wearing tangerine suits from Nordstrom working part time frosting cupcakes, but the Adora who took on fights she shouldn’t have won but always did. The girl who picked fights with Goliath and came out a David. 

_ That  _ was the Adora Catra had loved.

“Well I’m glad you’re impressed because my boss wasn’t. I’m just lucky Glimmer’s aunt owns Mystacor or HR would not have sided with.”  _ I’m starting to think you rely on this Glitter girl too much. Guess that’s why your so shiny and weak _ . “Since then I’ve been trying to tell myself things will get better there but…”

“They still suck?” finished Catra. And with that, the sympathy was back, and Catra had to resist the urge to shake her whole body like it was covered in spiders. This was not the emotion she wanted to feel with Adora.

It was the farthest thing from it.

“I’m 24 years old and I have no idea what’s going to happen with my life.”

_ Stop saying shit like that Adora!  _ Catra took a shaky breath, that stupid squeak in her voice betraying her vulnerability, her grip on the steering wheel relaxing. She watched the dark lines of her wrist tattoo poke out from under fingerless gloves, a permanent reminder of the end she was running from, the end she wondered she was doomed for.

“Yeah I can relate. To the depressing part, not the the cubicle shit and your terrible taste in clothing. But all that stuff is still pretty depressing.”

Shaking her head, Adora just shrugged.

Catra clicked her teeth. “Adora, if you’re not happy- not that I care if your happy or whatever” her eyes widened at that and it was  _ almost  _ satisfying, “just leave. You went to some college, can’t you just like... I dunno, get another desk job?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Catra. I only have my bachelors and most jobs are master level entry, and I would literally rather  _ die _ than go back to school. But this wasn’t-  _ isn’t  _ supposed to be permanent! Temping is supposed to well, be temporary! It was stupid to think I’d get published straight out of university. I’m gonna be stuck with Chad and the rest of those assholes for the rest of my life.” Adora’s voice had fallen to a whisper despite her spiteful tone at the start, but one detail still stuck out to Catra, like the red light she’d been glaring at for like the past ten minutes.

“Published? What are you trying to get published?” asked Catra. In front of her, brake lights were beginning to dim and Catra’s heart beat faster at the thought of actually moving.

But move they did not. The brake lights came right back on, and Catra had to resist the urge to slam her head into the wheel. “Publish? I didn’t say- did I say publish. Because um-”

“Adora...”

“You’re just gonna make fun of me!” she shouted, embarrassment leaking into her voice.

Catra glanced behind her to catch  Adora blushing. It was kinda cute, if not still pathetic. “Tell you what, Adora. I’m curious, so I won’t make fun of you for whatever really stupid thing you’re about to say next.”

“I don’t really believe you-”  _ Smart.  _ “-but I guess we’re stuck here. Okay so,” she took a deep breath but it didn’t help because she went back to being flustered almost immediately, “I’m trying to get this book published. For- for kids. Girls. Children. Little people, preteens not like babies-”

“Adora!”

“Itsaboutthisfemalewarriorwhogetspowersfromasword.”

_ A what?!  _ “Ha! That’s hilarious!” As soon the words escaped her mouth, Catra clamped a gloved hand over her mouth, her stiletto nails digging into lips.  _ Son of a bitch I said I wasn’t gonna say anything. But that’s so weird! _

Her passenger threw her hands up in the air. “You said you weren’t going to laugh, Catra!”

“Sorry, it was a reflex!”

“That’s an old excuse.” mumbled Adora.

She was right. How many times when they were younger had Catra’s unbridled yet unconsciousness jealousy been the reason for Adora tripping, falling down the stairs and face planting into bushes with thorns, or all of the times Catra yanked her off the playground equipment and she  _ always  _ broke some bone. Granted, younger Adora was always getting hurt because she was just  _ that  _ kid; by the time they were seven, she’d broken more bones than any other kid in their grade - in the whole school - and only once by Catra’s hand (Ironically, it was Adora’s hand, or some bone in her hand).    

So when Catra was the reason Adora got hurt, she could just brush it off like every other injury she sustained. Catra always warranted Adora’s forgiveness, no matter the severity, no matter the pain inflicted or the consequences of her chaos. But all that immunity that had built up with each other shattered long ago. Two different people were sitting in this car, and they were basically strangers. Yet Adora kept pushing it, even when Catra pushed her away. They were back to something that almost looked like a beginning. The beginning of what? Healing? The cynical part of her - which was most of her personality - didn’t buy that for a second.

_ If this is healing, then why does it hurt? _

“When did you writing become a thing?” asked Catra. The truck in front of her was beginning to inch forward, and her breath caught, her foot itching to hit the accelerator. 

“Sophomore year at university.” was her casual response.  _ Mmkay.  _ Catra didn’t say anything, knowing full well Adora was going to elaborate whether or not Catra expressed any interest. “After Razz died, I tore my ACL during a soccer game and the school took all my scholarships away when I couldn’t play the rest of the season.”

_ Of  _ fucking  _ course Adora was some star athlete on a full ride. Fucking dammit!  _ It took every bit of her inhibition not to punch the steering wheel.

“I almost dropped out. Like, I came really close. But I was taking this creative writing class that semester as an elective and I ended up really getting into it? My professor thought I could make it my living. He loved She-Ra.”

“She-Ra?” Was that mentioned earlier and Catra just wasn’t listening?

“Oh yeah, that’s her name. She-Ra, Princess of Power. Badass warrior with a sword.”

_ That’s dumb. And pathetic. Mostly just dumb. _

But also  _ so  _ Adora.

Before Catra could voice this fresh opinion of hers, Adora began yelling like a lunatic.  _ “ _ And now I’m working in a cubicle, because I can’t get one publisher to even fucking listen to me!” she screamed, kicking the seat next to Catra so hard the entire car shook.

“Jesus, Adora calm down!” Catra whirled around and dug her nails into Adora’s knee. “This isn’t even my car!”     

“OW! Damn it! What the- Catra let me go  _ now _ !” Adora’s own fingers wrapped around Catra’s wrist the second she had her hand on her knee, the strength so intense Catra worried for a hot second that Adora was going to get her revenge for all that time spent in a cast by crushing every bone in Catra’s skinny wrist.  _ Fuck me, she’s strong.  _ “What do you even mean, this isn’t your car?” She tore Catra’s nails from her skin but she didn’t release her arm.

Her words were just  _ dripping  _ with accusation, and Catra’s anger came back so suddenly and with so much force it could have knocked her sideways. “What, do you think I stole it, Adora?”

“No! I didn’t say that-”

“But it’s what you thought! Right now! You’re thinking it right now! Jesus  _ fuck _ , Adora! What creative writer tragic backstory did you come up for that? That I what, grabbed it after shoplifting? Hotwired it? Because I play dirty, right Adora? How original. I thought that maybe after all these years, you still wouldn’t be so fucking  _ predictable! _ ” It was Catra’s turn to scream now. And the look of shook and pained guilt on that perfect pretty face of hers? Oh, it was just fueling her anger, egging her on to dig the knife as deep as it could go.

Adora’s grip tightened but Catra stared her dead in the eye. Pretty little tears glistened in her blue eyes. “How could you say that Catra?”

“You think you’re so special, Adora?” Catra flashed her teeth, clamping her nails down into the skin of Adora’s hand. “That you hold some special place in my heart? Well guess fucking what, Princess! You’re not! You’re just like  _ everyone  _ else that doubted me! You’re just like everyone else that  _ left! _ ”

There it was. Out in the open. She was going to be able to breathe again after all these years.

Tears streamed down Adora’s face. “I never doubted you! Ever! We were kids, Catra! How was I supposed to know - is that a tattoo?” her voice fell as her gaze did.

“Yes you fucking did - wait, what?” Catra stuttered. One second Catra was on the offensive, the next Adora changed the goddamn conversation. Again! Catra made an effort to pull her hand away but of course Blonde Wonder Woman wouldn’t let go, and the cat-like nails drawing blood didn’t deter her in the slightest.

Adora bent Catra’s wrist back with enough brute force to lift the leather off her glove and expose the ink on her skin. If Catra wasn’t in the midst of reliving thirteen years worth of pent up animosity, Adora’s herculean strength might have been a turn on. “Adora!”

“I wanna see!”

“Why?”

Scowling, the blonde stared her down.  “I dunno Catra, did ever occur to you while you were screaming at me that I spent the last twenty minutes, not mention our whole last ride, telling you things about my life - painful things, stuff about my job I haven’t told  _ anyone - _ and I still know nothing about you!” Adora’s words reverberated off the cars interior.

“Fine.” Catra let her hand go limp, using her other to strip off the glove. As soon it was off, Adora began to study her wrist with an annoying intensity. “But stop acting like we can just pick up where we left off. It’s getting on my nerves.”  

Eyes still glued to Catra’s tattoo, Adora whispered “Then stop acting like a brat.”

She could have done it. Her hand was right there, sharpened nails  _ so  _ dangerously close to the flawless skin on her face, the creamy skin of her neck. So why didn’t Catra rip Adora’s throat out?

“This is beautiful.” There was a reverence in Adora’s voice. Catra didn’t like it one bit, squirming as she resisted tearing away from Adora once again, telling herself it was probably pointless to try. Adora’s wasn’t letting go, not this time anyway. “A cat? Really Catra?” she laughed softly.

“Yeah, duh Adora. What else was I supposed to get? ‘M not a dog person.” The corners of Adora’s mouth fluttered up. With other hand, she began to trace the dark lines with her fingers, the touch of her soft skin sending electricity through Catra’s body with such force she swore it almost stopped her heart.

She hadn’t let anybody touch her like this in a long time, for good reason. But Adora’s touch, the feel of her gentle skin on Catra’s, it was like a storm had found an expectant desert.   

All black ink and only about two and half inches in length, a cat sat with her back turned on Catra’s dark skin, her fur shaded to resemble a starry night sky. Adora’s fingers were cold as she inspected the small moon that lay in her neck, falling to the curled tail. It wasn’t Catra’s first tattoo and it wasn’t her last. What made this one special to her, why she had placed where it could not be ignored, was the fact that it was a design of her own, and that she had done it herself.

_ Seriously Adora? You’re taking forever, I want my hand back.  _ But Catra wasn’t so sure she did. For years she’d been starved of touch. If she didn’t hate Adora so much it hurt to breath, this might have been healing. So even if Catra did want her hand back…

But what she wanted _never_ mattered, because leave it to Adora to take her sweet time because no one else’s was of any of her concern.  

“Catra, seriously this is so cool.” said Adora. Her words rang with excitement, just like it did during the adventures she used to lead them all when they were confined to that hell of a home.

“Eh, thanks I guess? Not bad for my first time with a tattoo gun.”

Blue eyes met split ones, wide and disbelieving.  _ Surprised I managed to pull this off between hotwiring Drag Queens’ cars, Adora?  _ “You did this? Yourself?”

“Nah Adora, I made an actual cat do it - of course I did it!” Catra responded, unable to help the seething wit. It just came too easily.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Adora was quick to take it back, earning an eye roll from Catra, “I just don’t hear a lot about people giving  _ themselves  _ tattoos. Like, I didn’t even know it was possible. The pain wasn’t like, too extreme?”

“I didn’t either until I tried, and the pain wasn’t a problem when I was concentrating.” shrugged Catra. “But you know me, masochistic and impulsive as hell.”

Giving herself the tattoo at nineteen years old wasn’t exactly masochistic or impulsive. It definitely didn’t even land a spot on Catra’s top ten impulsive moments. There was planning, yeah, but not a lot. Meticulous detail was not her forte. When she’d gone into the tattoo shop to mope around, all she really had in her head was the initial design, but it was late in the evening, the main artist was swarmed and he’d left one of his stations unattended.

“Hey,” Catra remembered flagging down one of the employees and gesturing to the gun, “can I use this?”

“You know how?” they’d asked.

“Yeah, duh.” she said, lying through her teeth.

It wasn’t like they weren’t all about to find out.    

So the dude just let her and walked away, saying something about taking a nap in some break room. Catra later figured he’d only let her because he was stoned out of his mind, staring at her with those bloodshot eyes of his as if she wasn’t exactly a clear point in the room, or because he just didn’t care. Probably both. Didn’t matter, Catra had what she wanted, so she didn’t have to think.

She just did.

Ever the quick learner, a product of her messy survival, Catra figured how to use the tattoo gun in a matter of minutes. She’d watched enough artists and been in plenty of shops to know where to start, and the rest came as easy as breathing. This is what she’d wanted since she watched a strikingly beautiful women imprint a work of art on one of Hordak’s biceps (he’d let her come one time, and she’d fallen in love, getting her first tattoo - sans her foster father’s permission  _ but _ with his credit card- less than a month later; he came close to killing her, if his sick pride of her defiance hadn’t stopped his hand). Straddling the work bench, Catra threw her mane of frizzy curls up and cleaned her wrist with an alcohol wipe, the gun ready to work beside her. Hours went by before she knew it and by the time the sun was rising, Selena the Cat was the newest entity living on her body.  

Back in the present, the car still stalled and Catra’s hand was in Adora’s, her passenger voice was like that of someone in prayer. Adora had caught the name written under the tail. 

“Selena.” Catra watched her face with hesitation as several emotions flashed across her pretty, perfect face. A wide smile came over her, and Catra braced herself.  _ What inspired comment do you have for me now?  _ “Ooh, who’s Selena?” She wiggled her flawless eyebrows.

“Keep it in your pants Adora.” Catra growled, ignoring the wave of heat in her body at Adora’s words.  _ Why does she even deserve to know? Just tell her the it’s cat’s stupid name, and then tell her to shove it,  _ whispered part of Catra, the part that despised vulnerability. Vulnerability only led to the most painful places. That she’d learned the hard way.

Adora’s words came back to her full force. _ “I spent the last twenty minutes, not mention our whole last ride, telling you things about my life - painful things, stuff about my job I haven’t told anyone - and I still know nothing about you!” _

Maybe Adora didn’t deserve to know. But she did deserve to taste the hell Catra’d been living in. Her guilt may be worth Catra’s time after all. “Selena was my birth mother’s name.”

“Oh.” her face fell. “Wait, you found your birth mother?”

“Oh, I always knew about her, Adora. Cause I lived with her till I was four.”

“What?” Adora breathed out, satisfying betrayal written in her expression. “When you came to Weaver’s orphanage you said your family had abandoned you as a baby. That’d you lived in the system your whole life-”

“Yeah I said that so you’d  _ like  _ me. Every other kid there Weaver took in as an infant, and you Adora? You were like my hero.” Catra’s voice didn’t feel like her own anymore. “So yeah, I lied. Kinda surprised you even remember that.”

“Of course I remember. Catra, I’d never forget meeting you. I remember everything.”

“Yeah, well. Now you know.” shrugged Catra.

“Can I ask why you really came to Weaver’s orphanage? Since the whole ‘dropped off on the doorstep’ spiel was completely made up?”

Catra ran her tongue over her incisors. “Oh you know, four year old Catra woke up one morning and dear old Mom was just dead. And the next thing I know this social service chick is telling me I’m gonna live somewhere else. They took me to Weaver’s the next day. I think around, I dunno, fifteen maybe I put together what all those pills and all the tequila on the nightstand meant that morning.”

“Oh my God.” Adora’s head fell.

“Guess she just couldn’t handle that my piece of shit father wasn’t coming back. Don’t ask, I didn’t know him because he ran off before I was even born. See Adora? You’re not the only one that left. So you’re not special. It’s not like you mattered that much at all.”

“Catra, I didn’t know.” she whispered, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Yeah no one did, Adora, that was kind of the point of me lying-”

“No, not about that!” yelled Adora. “I didn’t know I was leaving you. When Mara came to Weaver’s and said she was adopting me, I asked if she could take you too.”

Scoffing, Catra shook her head, “Bullshit Adora, you did not-”

“ _ Yes,  _ yes I did. For God’s sake Catra, I was twelve! I knew we weren’t getting adopted so when Mara showed up out of the blue I thought that my out could be your out too. I  _ wanted  _ you to come with us but it wasn’t up to me! You’re acting like I jumped at the first chance to get you out of my life but it was the exact opposite! I asked Mara over and over to call you but she wouldn’t let me. The court ordered I wasn’t to maintain any contact with Mrs. Weaver… or you. They didn’t even let me say goodbye.” It was like Adora was choking on her tears. A sight disgusting enough to make Catra hurl.

“So that was just it? Huh?” asked Catra. Her body, her hand in Adora’s, had gone numb.

Taking a deep breath, Adora started “Mara said that Weaver was going to go prison. She said that she’d broken so many laws, and the water heater-” her voice caught and she steadied herself with another shaky breath “Mara said that Weaver stole me. That was the word she used, stole. Mrs. Weaver stole me and all those other kids from their birth parents. Mara promised me that when Weaver was in jail and you were safe I could call you. That I might even get to see you. I think she thought you would all go back to your birth parents. But- but Mara lied about a lot of things, like my mom and dad and my... I just thought- I thought this was the  _ one _ thing she was telling the truth about.”

“So why didn’t you fight harder to make that happen, Adora?” Catra couldn’t help let her anger over take her even as the other girl sobbed, “You wanna know what happened to me after you left me with Weaver? Friendly reminder this the same woman who shoved me in front of a fucking exploding water heater as her personal human shield! Weaver made my life  _ hell,  _ right up until the day when she was in handcuffs. That was  _ two and a half  _ months after you walked away, so yeah, she had her fun until then. And we didn’t go back to our rightful birth parents or to happy shiny couples eager to adopt! They just threw us into different foster homes that were just as shitty as her orphanage. I went through  _ five  _ different homes before I graduated high school, just tossed around like a fucking hot potato. You just went on with your perfect little life!”

“Jesus Christ Catra, I’m sorry, okay?” Adora sobbed, “I’m  _ so  _ sorry! You said I was your hero, well I guess I failed!”

“Yeah,” Catra hissed, the tears warm as they fell down her cheeks, “guess you did.”

There it was. An apology, an admittance of her failures. The words Catra desired all her life. That beautiful face of hers broken and defeated. Wasn’t that all she ever wanted? For Adora to be the one beneath her? To feel the fear and inadequacy, the unique retribution that came with abandonment. Well here Adora was, crying her eyes out in some desperate attempt at repentance, her own life spiraling beyond her control.

So why did Catra still feel  _ so  _ empty?

“Fuck!” Catra let out a guttural scream, driving her fist into the wheel sounding off the horn. It did nothing to ease the pain. Nothing ever did, and it was killing her. Just liked it killed Selena.

“Tell me how to make this right. Please Catra, I need to make this right.” she cried and her grip on Catra’s hand tightened.

_ How could you  _ ever  _ fix what you did? _

“I don’t know, Adora! How the hell am I supposed to know?” her voice was hoarse, her blurry gaze fixating on the tattoo that had hypnotized her old friend. All she had to do was close her eyes and the image of her mother lying motionless would be right there waiting. A memory untouched after all this time. This was the pain, the loneliness and hatred, that drove her mother so far over the edge that even her baby girl wasn’t enough to live for. Catra knew why she spent hour after hour, her back sore and head begging for rest, taking a needle to her skin. She knew why she put it on her wrist but hid it under a glove. As a reminder. A prayer. Do not end up like Selena.  _ Sorry, but I can’t end up like you. So this has to end, right? But why do  _ I  _ have to be the one who ends it? Haven’t I fucking done enough already?  _  “But I guess this is a start.”

Adora breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, thank you Catra. I’m not gonna mess this up. Not this time, Catra I prom-”

“Don’t promise. You’ve got a deal... just no more promises Adora. You’re not great at keeping them.” Her head ached, but not in the way she had become accustomed too. There was a weakness in her lungs and in her heart, but not from fatigue. A rawness existed in her throat, but it didn’t come from screaming or the familiar burn of alcohol. This was the unique exhaustion that followed crying and crying only and she  _ hated  _ it. She hated how weak it made her seem, what it reduced her too. Hated the tiredness and relief flooding her shaking body, a body that wanted a break from her insistence to be strong. The salt of her stupid tears were burning her dry skin, the filed edges of her nails scraping the sensitive skin when she tried to wipe them away.    

_ If this is healing, why does it hurt so fucking much? _

“Yeah, ok.” Adora whispered. Catra wiped her tears as Adora wiped her own. The lights of the city and the headlights of the vehicles flooded Catra’s car with a warm light that revealed Adora in a new light itself. All this time she’d seen her imagined nemesis as perfect and pretty, all sparkle and no substance, but now all that makeup was gone, washed away by her own tears. Now Adora’s baby blue eyes were puffy and red, and Catra could see dark circles under her unfairly long and dark eyelashes. Acne scars dusted her cheeks, and her lips were chapped and devoid of color. Under that pretty little mask of hers, she was pale and tired and hurting... just like everybody else. Just like Catra was.

Catra thought she might look better this way. Less like some vapid princess and more like a real person. _Tired cried-out Adora is kinda sexy. How is she still_ pretty _after having a melt down, Jesus Christ!_ _And I should not be having these thoughts._

Her ear twitched, and suddenly she was aware of someone honking. One person honking then turned into two people honking, then three, then four. Around the sixth horn sounding off, Catra realized  _ they  _ were being honked at, and turned to look out the windshield. The light was green and had been for some time, because the space in front of them was open. They were moving, at long last.  _ Oh shit. _

“Um Adora?” she looked back to where there hands were still joined. Adora was gazing at their hands, but the glazed look in her eyes had Catra convinced she wasn’t really seeing.

The blonde looked up with those tired eyes. “Yeah?”

“I’m gonna need my hand back to drive.”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah!” Adora dropped Catra’s hand like it had burned her. “Sorry.”

“S’fine. We’re moving.” explained Catra.

“We are?”

“Looks like it.” Catra sighed and clicked her tongue. Everything hurt like hell and concentrating on the drive was going to take most of her energy. “Finally.”

Adora’s reply was nothing but a hoarse whisper. “Finally.”

_

“Hey Adora…” Catra whispered. The car was too quiet for her liking. Now that their super convenient traffic jam had decided to clear up for them, they’d made it through downtown. Being out of the emotional fray was ideal, but the volume in the car had fallen way below Catra’s liking; the only noise was the two of them sniffling and Catra decided she was  _ done  _ with that. 

Wasn’t the whole point of their heart-to-heart sob fest to  _ start  _ talking? Not sit in the car awkwardly trying to choke back phlegm?

“Yeah?”

“I know you think you’re being sly, but I can totally see you wiping your snot on your sleeve.”

“Catra!” Adora whined, completely idiginant. “You’re- you’re wiping your snot on your jacket too. I saw you!”

“I’m not gonna confirm or deny that, Adora, but even if I was, my jacket isn’t one of three really expensive pant suits I’m rotating for this shitty desk job I’m working-”

“Shuuuut up! I’ll just wash it!” she moped, running a hand through that pony tail of hers. “Or get it dry cleaned, or something. Does that work for you, Catra?”

That just earned her passenger a shrug. But it was nice knowing she could still get under the blonde’s skin after they two had emotionally vomited all over each other. “I mean yeah why not? I’m sure snot and orange puke are like a trending statement in Bright Moon.”

“Ugh! What else am I supposed to do, it’s not like you have any tissues!” said Adora, digging in her backpack only to come up empty.

“Uh, you don’t know that. Here, there might be something let me look-” Catra extended her arm, trying to reach the glove compartment and keep her eyes on the road as well as keep the car in the lane. With a pop, the compartment came open and Catra began to fish around its sea of endless gunk for tissues, or at very least some paper towels “Damn it come on, aha-” But her victory was cut short when she yanked out what was not some sort of cloth like she’d initially believed, but a long black lace thong. Catra could practically  _ hear _ Adora’s jaw hit the car floor. “Are you  _ fucking  _ kidding me, Marshmallow?”

“Marshmallow? Why would a marshmallow own a thong?”

Catra could only squeak, flailing her arm while yanking the steering wheel with the, “Fucking disgusting, ughhhhhh I can’t get it off! _ Fuck! _ ” because try as she might, she couldn’t shake this stupid lingerie from her nails.

Adora was there to come to the rescue in the midst of her laughter, leaning over the seat and ripping it off Catra hand, tossing it onto the passenger seat. “I got it, calm down Catra.”

“God I feel violated!”  _ I’m gonna have to burn my skin off, thanks Marshmallow. _

“ _ You’re _ the one who touched another woman’s underwear-”

“Adora!”

The blonde was clutching her stomach she was laughing so hard. Tears had sprung in her eyes again, this time for a less intense reason. “Christ Catra, I’m just kidding! But seriously you didn’t answer my question.”

“Marshmallow owns the car, Adora, and apparently she uses it for  _ more _ than just driving!” Catra shuddered. This was the last time she borrowed  _ anything  _ from Scorpia’s crew.

“Her name is Marshmallow?” asked Adora, lifting an eyebrow.

“She’s a drag queen.”

“Oh, makes sense.” Then, “Why are you borrowing a car from a drag queen?”

“So I can work for Uber, duh.” Catra told her.

“You know what I mean.” responded Adora with a huff, Catra snickering under her breath.  _ This is fun. A lot more fun than ten fucking minutes ago. _

“Long story short, my roommate owns a club where Drag Queens can perform, and I dunno dance, that kind of thing. Marshmallow’s one of the performers and this is her  _ disgusting”  _ Catra took her eyes of the road for a hot second to glare at the panties lying on her passenger “car. I’m gonna kill her. Couldn’t give me a heads up, babe? Ugh!”

Adora perked up at this. “You have a roommate?”

“Two actually. You’re not the only one without any money, Princess.”

“Tell me about them.” she whispered, then caught herself “I mean, only if you want too.”

“Why not?” Catra shrugged. Her whole body was exhausted and her brain was numb, eyes still stinging, but if Adora wanted to know about her weird and sort of shitty life, Catra figured that was better than succumbing to her fatigue in a quiet car and watching Adora wipe her nose. “So there’s Scorpia, the one with the studio. She’s like, I dunno, ten years older than us? Super sweet, kinda dumb, no respect for personal space so you two would  _ definitely  _ get along.”

“Rude. But she sounds nice.”

Catra ignored her and continued. “And then there’s Entrapta, she’s like this brilliant tech whiz but her main talent is driving me up the fucking wall.”

“Wait a second, I knew Entrapta! We went to university together, I think she was year behind me? Bow had a bunch of classes with her, they almost like dated, I’m pretty sure.” Adora had lit up and had grabbed the back of Catra’s seat, yanking both her and the seat back with that sexy olympic strength of hers. Catra grunted.

“Wow, small world.”

“We were all super mad when the dean kicked her out.”

“She got  _ kicked _ out?” laughed Catra, her jaw dropping. Yeah, it definitely checked out, but still. It’s not like Catra and Entrapta had conversations beyond “No you cannot raise a colony of super bacteria in our shower, I don’t give a shit what experiment it’s for!”

“Yeah, Entrapta was doing this like experiment for her sociology class-” Catra snorted “-where she released everyone’s text messages to the public. Chaos ensued  _ really  _ fast. It wasn’t that big of a deal- I mean Bow and Glimmer fought for like a week cause he texted me that he didn’t like Fall Out Boy all that much and whole bunch of people cheating were exposed, but still. The most damage that was done was we found out the Dean was sending his nudes to one of the statistic professors, they were both married, and it kind of became a meme… which is probably why he had Entrapta expelled.”

_ Fucking Entrapta you annoying little genius!   _ “That’s what’s great about Entrapta, she does not give a single  _ shit _ about repercussions as long as she ‘gets quantifiable data’ or whatever’s she always saying.”

“Yep. But this time the only  _ quantifiable  _ data any of us got was how small Dean Martin’s dick was.” Adora laughed, her nose wrinkling in a way that made Catra’s heartbeat faster.  _ The fuck is that about? _

“I guess that explains how someone with that much annoying brain power ended up working as tech support at MegaMart.” Catra clicked her tongue.

Adora tilted her head, her voice low. “She’s working at MegaMart?”    

“Yeah princess, it’s kinda where we met when  _ I  _ worked there. You jealous yet?”

“You were also working at MegaMart?” There was no judgement in Adora’s tone and it threw Catra off her feet a little; amusement yeah, stupidly annoying amusement, but no judgement.

“Don’t get excited, it was just my last shitty job. Working in retail is fucking terrible!”

“Yeah, you don’t have to tell me twice. I used to work at a Sears. In a mall.”

“Ha, you’re a loser!” Catra reached behind her and poked her in the forehead with one her long nails. Trying not to laugh, Adora swatted her hand away. “At least I met those two dorks bagging people’s shit. Scorpia took us both in cause me and Entrapta were both getting evicted out of our places the same month. But then Scorpia ran off to manage her club and now I’m doing this.” she gestured to car with her gloved hand.  

“Did you quit MegaMart when she left?” asked Catra’s passenger.

“Nah, I got fired like six months later.” Catra clarified, “My boss already didn’t like me, and then I got in a fight with this half brained customer. When Scorpia was still the assistant narc- sorry manager, old habit- she’d usually stick up for me but without her there to protect me…”

“You got canned?” Adora finished for her. Catra nodded her response. “Well, I’m sure whatever half brained customer you decked deserved it. I mean, whenever you got in fights when we were little kids, they usually deserved it.”

Catra raised an eyebrow. “Even when that little kid was you?”

“I’m beginning to think little Adora  _ really  _ deserved it.” Adora mumbled. Her gaze had fallen to her hands, and Catra squirmed in her seat, swallowing the urge to smack her in the forehead.  _ Damn it Adora, how are you so good at making everything and everyone uncomfortable? And still make it about you?  _ “So how’s working for Uber?”

“Fucking glamorous, Princess.”  Catra threw her head back. They were getting close to Adora’s neighborhood (thank God, this trip had only lasted a million years).  _ The Whispering Woods. _

_ God what a dumb name. _

“Beat anybody up yet?’ she inquired with an almost seductive smile on her face, like she was enjoying herself just a little too much. Leave it to Adora to get comfortable right after the minimum amount of emotional labor. She was still sitting as close as she could to the driver's seat, straining the seat belt, leaning on the leather of Catra’s seat. Catra could smell her lotion, her nose twitching at the sensation.  _ Vanilla, Adora? Seriously? How basic have these Bow and Glitter people made you?  _  “You know, that deserved it?”

Well Catra had come pretty close to beating the shit out of someone. Like with that pirate looking dude who co-opted her aux cord and then _ left  _ with it. Of course Adora had come close on several occasion to getting her ass handed to her. “Hey it’s not like you can just drop kick Chad, so I can’t do that to my passengers either. Or else I’d’ve  _ decked  _ you, Adora. I kinda need this job, even if it does suck ass,” she whined.

“What, you’re like above stripping or something?” giggled Adora, throwing her head back. It was meant to be a joke, but Catra kind of wanted to push it just to see if Adora would commit.

“Dude, stripping is fucking hard! Do you know how talented you have to be to pole dance?” She didn’t know this from experience. This fun fact had been pointed out to Catra on multiple occasions. Once by this woman at a bar she was flirting with who turned out to actually be a stripper. Three times by a sex worker who worked a day shift at MegaMart (If only Catra could remember her name, that lady was a badass. But the turnover rate at that store was pretty extensive, so she never bothered to learn names. Especially since those dum-dums called her Cathy like 75% of the time).

And of course she couldn’t go two damn weeks without one of Scorpia’s drag queens (even though none of them stripped they were all passionate about rights for sex workers and the likes) giving her this lecture for the fourteenth time to which Catra’s response never failed to be “You  _ don’t  _ live here Diamond!”

“Oh I get it.” Adora’s smug tone had made a comeback, “You just don’t have what it takes.”

“Um  _ excuse  _ me princess, I’d make an amazing stripper!” Catra threw a gloved hand back looking for some body part to hit, but Adora dodged the clumsy swing with a laugh. “Like I’d be so damn good, gross old straight dudes would hire me to work private events for their CEO events or for their virgin sons-”

“Stop, ugh that’s  _ disgusting _ Catra! And demeaning! I’d rather you just drive for Uber! At least you get to keep you dignity that way.”  _ Dignity? Yeah, crying and screaming like telenovela actress twenty minutes ago at/with you was the exact definition of dignity.  _ Catra rolled her eyes as Adora laughed, trying - and failing - to keep herself from smiling.

The change of subject was almost a relief to Catra. It was about stripping yeah, but she didn’t mind. Like she loved being drilled about strange details about her life as much as any other Uber driver, but this- awkward teasing, dare she say flirting? That was were she  _ thrived. _

But nothing good could last forever.

As Catra drove past the sign for Adora’s neighborhood, the blonde went right back to it “Wait Catra, why aren’t you a tattoo artist? I’ve seen what you can do-”

“You’ve seen a  _ little  _ of what I can do, dummy.” she poked the hand resting so dangerously close to her shoulder.

Her blue eyes went wide with child-like excitement.  _ Ohhhhh no. _ “You have other tattoos?”

“Duh.”

One on each shoulder, one on the nape of her neck, and two on her ribcage. Not by her own hand (fucking dope in concept, but impossible to achieve nevertheless), but all her own designs. All hidden in plain sight from those she didn’t want to let close. Including Adora.

“Can I see?! Please, Catra, please?”

“Nope!”

Right on schedule, Adora began throwing another tantrum, whining and pouting like a little kid. That was a given, and Catra was prepared. “Just cause I’d make a damn good stripper doesn’t mean I’m taking off my clothes so you can see my tattoos, you giant baby!”

“You suck Catra!” Adora threw her head on Catra’s seat with a long dramatic sigh.

“It’s not what you paid for.”

“But seriously, the one you did show me, the cat- that was incredible!”  _ We’re really just gonna fly past the ‘paid for’ comment? Okay.  _ “And you did it all yourself! Why aren’t you working for an actual tattoo shop? Or place? Or whatever they’re called...”

Catra let out a long sigh and squeezed the steering wheel. “It’s not like I can just walk in and ask for a job, Adora. I’m mean I have a portfolio and all that shit, but they want experienced artists with qualifications and all that junk. The classes I need for like an apprenticeship are fucking expensive.”

They were turning down Adora’s street.

“Catra you’re squandering your talent. What you can do is amazing and you shouldn’t - you shouldn’t be wasting your life driving for  _ Uber _ ! If you need help budgeting or something, I can help. Let me help.” pleaded Adora.

_ Oh. So  _ this  _ is how she plans to make up for the last thirteen years. Of fucking course. _

Rolling her eyes so hard they almost got stuck, Catra said “Now you’re just spewing bullshit.”

“No, I’m serious!” she practically shouted. “Don’t let whatever stupid fear you have hold you back, dummy.”

“Pff, scared? I’m not- I’m  _ not _ scared, Adora!” Catra stuttered.

Was she? It wasn’t like she never had the money to move forward. It was just never, ever the right time. Whenever she did have cash, she was always paying Scorpia back for whatever she had helped with that current week, or splurging on boots or a leather jacket or shots at a bar, or a new fucking microwave because she burned it down daydreaming about one stupidly hot blonde.

Entrapta said she could do it and Scorpia begged her to “go after her dreams” but Catra pushed them away, saying over and over it didn’t matter. There was no point in pursuing this childish fantasy. That was for rich kids with no sense of identity and bad relationships with their parents.

_ I kinda... sound like Hordak.  _ Catra thought, swallowing the wave of conflicted emotions that had washed over her.

Catra didn’t want to waste away jumping from minimum wage job to minimum wage job. She and the universe just had this understanding. Nothing  _ ever  _ worked out for her, and that was by design. Besides, this was farther than anyone ever thought she’d make it. Why test it?

Weaver thought she’d end up dead like her mother. Hordak thought she’d end up a criminal like her father. And Dearest Mommy and Daddy themselves didn’t even stick around to find out.

There was a slight, however minimal, chance Adora had a point. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t a criminal, she’d made it this far. Why  _ not _ push it further?

The idea had her shaking in her boots. Could she actually make it as an artist? Could that actually be more than some maladaptive daydream? Could she… Catra stopped herself right there. She knew the ending of this story. Disappointment. Scorpia’s disappointment, Entrapta’s disappointment, Adora’s… her own.

_ Am I scared of failing? Fuck, I’m not scared of failing! I’m not!  _ Her own words rang empty in her head.

“You have arrived.” the sound of her phone shook her from the trance she’d been in, operating on autopilot as she drowned in her own thoughts.

Catra put the car in park with a sigh. Here they were again, back at Adora’s lofty home. She curled her fingers into fist to keep herself from tearing her own eyeballs out, because she knew that Adora wasn’t going without a fight. She didn’t want to have this conversation. Not now, not ever.

“Helping me is pointless Adora.” sighed Catra.  _ Please get out. _

“Well, I’m not letting you give up.” Adora said, poking her in the shoulder. Catra threw her head back and it hit the seat with a  _ whump! _

“Then  _ what  _ are you doing? Is getting out one of them?”

“Tell you what Catra,” Adora leaned back, her arms crossed, into her own seat. “If I finish my story and say, manage to actually get a publisher’s attention, then you’ll take these classes and let me help you budget.”

Turning, Catra narrowed her split eyes. This was a risky move, for both of them. After all, she’d never read any of Adora’s writing and had no way to gauge her ability. If Catra’s experience of being in Adora’s shadow was any indication, she was probably crushing it with little to no effort. But Adora knew Catra was not above ridiculing her work just to make her squirm. She was making herself vulnerable to get Catra to make a move, and it was working. “You’re  _ that _ confident in this She-Ra chick?”

“I am. Well, mostly. I don’t want to get into my confidence issues right now - just, do we have a deal or not Catra?” Adora asked.

“Yeah, we have a deal.” nodded Catra. “As long as you get  _ out _ of my car. I wanna go home.”

“Geeze, okay.” Catra watched, knowing full well her expression was one of annoyance (she could  _ not  _ have Adora knowing Catra kind of liked having her around; it’d go straight to her big head) as Adora threw her Jansport over her shoulder and threw the door open. “You know, I stand by my earlier statement. You’d make a bad stripper cause you’re like the least agreeable person on the planet and it’s kind of a turn off-”

_ “Out,  _ Adora!”

“I’m going, Catra!” Adora shouted as she stumbled on the pavement in those heels of hers, Catra snickering. Right as she moved to put the car back in gear, Adora’s head popped back in the door, her ponytail swinging from the momentum, “Hey, do you think I should get a tattoo?”

Catra’s heart began to beat a mile a minute. That statement was packed with, if anything, insinuation.  _ Don’t think about giving Adora a tattoo, don’t think about giving Adora a tattoo. Don’t think about her bare skin glowing in the neon light, or the muscles because she’s so ripped she almost tore my hand off or being that fucking close to her stupid beautiful face and her stupid pretty lips. _

Cause stopping that train of thought was going to be effective.

It was strange, Catra did have to admit that much. At the beginning of the night she had been ready to slit the other woman’s throat just for some semblance of closure and now here they were at the end of the drive, Adora’s throat unmarked, asking each other for freaking favors. Leaning back in her seat in an attempt to play it cool, Catra winked at the blonde. “I don’t think you could handle the pain, Princess.”

Adora smiled, shaking her head just a little. “Good night Catra.”

“Night Adora.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooooooh. 
> 
> so the chapter ended up being so long and so packed that drunk Adora will make an appearance next time!   
> few things! Scorpia's VA, Lauren Ash, plays Dina on the show Superstore, where she's literally an assistant manager!   
> Marshmallow is inspired by a character on Bob's Burgers. She's not a drag queen, but she's pretty freaking funny, and she does hang with drag queens.  
> fun fact: I grew up mormon. Very much not so anymore, as you can tell! but I've been struggling with ptsd from my time in the church so yeah... The Horde is a lot like mormonism, once you get past the shiny sparkly normality.   
> You can give yourself a tattoo! I looked it up! I do not recommend doing what she did though.  
> Btw, I have no idea how you become a tattoo artist. I just googled "how to become a tattoo artist."   
> god I want a tattoo so bad.  
> [Catra's wrist tattoo](https://www.instagram.com/p/BFrHVmgtua2/?utm_source=ig_embed)  
> also, as a person who's been suicidal multiple times and struggles with mental illness tenfold, if you're struggling reach out. my blog is always open and there are so many resources. don't wait until it's too bad. act now.
> 
> I also made a SPOP blog! come follow! [princessofgayskull](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com)
> 
> thanks again to anna, my beta!   
> please let me know what you thought of this chapter! ~savannah


	3. think you need a friend like me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra was cracking, breaking at the seams, and Adora was the light that was finally getting in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, beating my anxiety and chronic pain with a stick: we! are! getting! this chapter! up! tonight! so! help! me! god!
> 
> i want to thank each and every one of you for your support on this story. it's so wonderful that you take your time to read my work, and that so many of you have let such great feedback.
> 
> replying to comments always overwhelms me, but i do read all of them, and they do help so much with what happens in the story.
> 
> so here we go! one drunk adora coming right up! (also making their grand entrance: entrapta and bow!) also
> 
> "gina linetti voice* warning, drunk adora real sloppy....

The third time she ends up Catra’s passenger, Adora is so drunk she can barely stand. 

A handful of days go by before Catra is ready to see her again, or even ready to drive again (especially in Marshmallow’s dirty, slutty  _ slutty _ car). Turns out working through her lifelong trauma- or at least making a fucking start cause she doubted even the most affluent psychiatrist all the money in the world could buy could tackle this clusterfuck of post traumatic symptoms in one night-  just  _ had _ to have an affect on her body, and it just  _ had _ to be destined to last more than the ride home after dropping Adora off because the following morning, Catra lacked her usual spite fueled strength to drag herself out of bed. All she could do was  _ fall  _ out of bed and lay there in a pathetic pool of tears until Entrapta came home from the night shift. Because it was just her luck that every cell in her body ached like a bitch and that her migraine managed to hang around for a combined total of four fucking brutal days.

_ Adora’s probably doing  _ just  _ fine _ , Catra kept telling herself with a certain bitterness, her head buried under her pillow, her nails slowly tearing holes as she clawed at her sheets.  _ Slaying at life in her ugly/sexy pantsuit.  _ But the bitterness always faded into oblivion given time. Looks like she’d run out of fuel to be angry with her old friend. Or she’d just run out of energy period. That night in the car with Adora had been the first real step to forgiving her, and yeah, Catra knew that her anger was destructive and definitely killing her if not slowly- her conversation/ emotional fit throwing contest with Adora had shown her anything- but forgiveness did not fuel her, not like hatred or anger did, not enough to get her up off the floor, or do the dishes piling up, or do anything but lay face down listening to reruns of  _ That 70’s Show. _

Other than that, all she could do was sleep and when she wasn’t sleeping, her body compensated for all that lost torture time by ensuring she spent every single second in full on, agonizing fight or flight mode. Every single sound, whether it was a whisper or the barely function A/C unit struggling to turn on, sent her flying out of bed like a scared cat with it’s fur on end. And what Catra succeeded in blocking out, the light or the sound or any sense of real feeling, her roomates certainly made up for.

As always, Scorpia tried to act like her mother when Catra just wanted be left alone (like, wasn’t that super obvious?). That meant using Scorpia's god like strength to tear Catra out from under the covers while Catra clung to the mattress with her nails and her nails only.  She’d manage to get Catra to change clothes (leave it to Scorpia to do her laundry  _ without  _ asking) and drink some of those water bottles when she could. Then each night she’d dump a bunch of varying fast food on Catra’s bed and refuse to leave her alone until she took a bite of  _ something.  _ Catra was starting to get sick of McDonald’s apple pies, Scorpia’s all time favorite.

Entrapta's methods for “supporting” Catra, were without question,  _ much  _ different.

“Log, hour 27, 28? No, definitely 27, of subject’s Pity Party” that’s what Scorpia had dubbed Catra’s emotional hangover and Entrapta took to it like she took to “experimenting” on Diamond’s donated blender. “Subject has not moved in the past 42 minutes and is currently face down in her pillow. The pillow is covered in drool and sweat, possibly tears, interesting, interesting- Oh she moved! Subject is currently still face down in her pillow but is now flipping me off!” Catra covered her ears as her roommate started clapping with gross enthusiasm.

“‘Trapta, I’m gonna come over there and crush your recorder with my bare hands.” Catra said, her slurred words lost in the fabric of her pillow.

“Subject, as usual, prone to intense hostility, is now making violent threats-”

“You wanna see violent?” Catra whipped her head up so quickly the vertebrae in her neck snapped and every single neuron in her brain retaliated with a wave of intense pain. Any plan of choking Entrapta with her own mass of purple hair went out the window as she fell limp into a fetal position with a series of expletives.

Comment lined up, Entrapta inched closer to the side of her bed. “Subject seems to be experiencing acute emotional exhaustion...”

“Acute emotional what?” Catra extended a hand to swat her away, only to find nothing but air. Entrapta must’ve inched away from her bed. Smart. “How do  _ you _ even know that?”

“Subject is inquiring to the parameters of said diagnosis, yay! Well, Catra”  _ finally, my fucking name,  _ “it’s simple. Based on your past cycle of destructive behaviors and cynical demeanor, one can easily come to the conclusion that you are a victim of trauma.”

“No  _ shit. _ ”

“Said trauma has led to a series of poor coping mechanisms such as slight alcohol abuse, usually the main predictor in past Pity Party’s, as Scorpia calls them,” Catra made a series of unintelligible mumbling into her comforter, “but Scorpia has removed all alcohol for the apartment. It’s quite disappointing really, that vodka was turning out to the be the key variable in my experiment with the blender-”

At this point Entrapta was interrupted by Catra’s pillow. To her face, specifically. Looks like her body  _ could  _ muster up the strength and agility long enough to avoid hearing an hour long explanation of Entrapta’s kitchen appliance adventures. That, or luck was on her side and the universe  _ also  _ wanted Entrapta to shut up.

It didn’t mean Entrapta shut up about her adventures in Catra experiments anytime soon. Luck wasn’t on her side after all. Shocking. “Subject hit me with pillow. Is that progress? I’ll mark it as progress, Scorpia will be so excited to hear this update!”

“Ugh…” whined Catra.  _ God, I’m beginning to get why Mami called it quits. _

“Oh, yes! I was explaining your current pathetic state!” Entrapta perked back up, just loud enough to make Catra bury her poor aching head again. Why did her roommates have to be so fucking loud all the damn time?  _ Bet Adora’s roommates are quiet when she needs them to be. Glitter and Arrow.  _ And while Catra was keen to stick with that ugly thought, another part of her couldn’t help but be reminded of how Adora listened patiently to her talk about her roommates, how she seemed to adore Entrapta for the chaotic fun she stirred up as well as her admiration of Scorpia even though they hadn’t met.  _ I can’t believe a memory of Adora is guilting me into being grateful.  _ “So, if alcohol ceases to be dependent variable, something must take its place. In your case, I theorize it to be serious emotional upheaval.”

_ “Jesus Christ Catra, I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry! You said I was your hero, well I guess I failed!” _

_ “Yeah… guess you did.” _

_ “Tell me how to make this right. Please Catra, I need to make this right.” _

_ “I don’t know, Adora! How the hell am I supposed to know?” _

The memories of that night continued to follow her like sound traveling through water; they were there but they were also faint, fuzzy yet tangible, so far away but close enough she could reach out and touch it. It was like she was drowning but she was also coming up for air.

Only she knew Adora was drowning too. Here they were, dragging each other kicking and screaming up to the surface.

Guess it was something.

“Yeah,” muttered Catra, the sounds of Entrapta scribbling on her pad with that purple glitter pen of hers like a mad man still finding her sheltered ears, “something like that.”

“Interesting…”  _ I swear to God if she calls me subject one more goddamn time, _ “subject confirms my hypothesis-”

“STOP CALLING ME SUBJECT!”

Five days of this passed before the enduring pain brought on by her own barely functioning body, accompanied by the persistent presence of the two most annoying human beings on the entire goddamn planet who also just happened to live with her, was replaced by something resembling energy and she got out of that damn black hole of a bed, fueled by her familiar spite and fear that Entrapta was gonna take some rusted scalpel she’d found in the apartment complex dumpster to her neck while she was sleeping. She did her laundry and finally took a goddamn shower because, yeah, she eventually got around to paying the water bill (mostly because she figured her motley crew was really starting to test Senora’s Rodriguez’s patience and Catra was tired of apologizing for Scorpia’s butchered attempts at Spanish every time they went down there) and did all that other basic self care junk Dr. Newman told her about like eat and take some painkillers. Or at least she hoped she accomplished all those menial tasks, knowing there was a chance she’d forgotten something.

It’s not like she actually listened when men talked.

And then after throwing all of Marshmallow’s junk into a duffel bag which she then threw in the trunk and  _ locked,  _ Catra got in the car around 11 am, the earliest she’d been up in a freaking month, with the intention of working the whole damn day. Her five day Pity Party meant she’d lost several nights worth of revenue, so if she wanted to be able to pay the water bill  _ next  _ month, that meant sucking it up, working early, and having a killer headache by noon. But she kept going, annoying passenger after annoying passenger (seriously, Bright Moon was the  _ absolute  _ worst). The only time she stopped was around four in the afternoon to get her nails redone at the cheapest salon in Bright Moon Google Maps could locate, because after five days in bed they were in gross shape, the black matte paint chipping and three of them broken. Arguably a waste of money, but what was the point of saving if she had to have short ugly nails, like the ones Adora was rocking? Then she got right back in the car and headed towards her newest request downtown. She kept going, hour after brutal hour, because Catra was pretty damn terrible at a lot of things, but when it came to refusing to call it quits, that area was where she excelled.

_ “Catra you’re squandering your talent. What you can do is amazing and you shouldn’t - you shouldn’t be wasting your life driving for Uber!” _

Okay, scratch that. Catra sucked at throwing in the towel, unless it was about something completely nonsensical and a waste of time, like actually pursuing her dream of becoming a tattoo artist.

When she could hear herself think over Entrapta’s never ending scientific musings, Scorpia’s loud “mothering”, and her own memories invading her waking conscious, Catra let herself entertain the thought. Sign up for the classes, get her apprenticeship, that would take some time right? Couple months, maybe years? She’d have to do more research, ugh, her favorite. How fast could she get through it? Probably pretty fast, if she had any real say in it, if this wasn’t to remain some stupid fantasy. Like, it couldn’t be that hard right? Catra stalked plenty of shops and observed enough artists to know it wasn’t fucking rocket science. That one dude who’d inked her right shoulder wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb on the shelf or anywhere near it; in fact,  _ she  _ had to be the one to remind him to clean her skin and that there were other types of gloves to wear since he was “allergic” to latex. He basically spent the whole time flirting with her. Fucking airhead was lucky she didn’t punch him in the throat. Catra could do a  _ hell _ of a lot better than him even with her lack of experience, (seriously, were they just  _ handing _ certifications out to every white dude with a sleeve tattoo and a SAT score over 450?) that much she was confident in. In one night only and with help from a grand total of zero people, she figured out to give herself Selena, how complicated could everything else really be?

But then she’d start to put some of that energy into thinking about money and it all went to shit. There was no way she was taking  _ any  _ of Scorpia’s help (Catra’d rather jump out her apartment window and hope she’d land on her feet than give that lady a chance to pull out her puppy themed checkbook). Maybe Adora could help in whatever way she’d drummed up in that pretty little head of hers, but Catra wasn’t exactly in the mood to coupon with the girl she’d just gotten around to barely tolerating.

Catra snorted at the thought as she took the exit to the west side. The glowing red numbers on her dashboard clock read 11:58 pm. That’s how Adora probably budgeted right, with coupons? As truly pathetic as it sounded, Catra couldn’t help but think the image of Adora furiously cutting up some poor unsuspecting newspaper like it was a goddamn competition at a little coffee table, legs spread out like a little kid and hair coming out of her ponytail, was kind of adorable. If Adora ever did manage to get published, that’s probably how they’d celebrate. Coupons, with like wine and everything.

God, couponing sounded like the worst date in the entire universe.

_ But a date with Adora-DON’T YOU FUCKING GO THERE!  _ Catra shut that thought down just as fast as she shut down any thought about pursuing an apprenticeship, white knuckling the steering wheel. No way in hell was she going to let that scenario play out. Catra may have a had bunch of negative attributes, but being  _ that  _ stupid wasn’t one of them.

“Speaking of stupid, where the hell are you Adora?” she asked her phone, narrowing her eyes. Now a quarter past midnight, Catra hadn’t received any ride requests despite having been parked at _Light Spinner Industries_ long enough to start talking to herself in a pitiful attempt to fill the quiet. _God,_ she missed her Aux cord. “Well I’m here Adora, why don’t you just get your stupid sexy ass out here so we can get this over with.”

Catra had come back to the west side without throwing a fit or putting up a fight for a reason. It’s not like she wanted to deal with the stupid construction or the long ride home with only an excruciating migraine to keep her company, but one night with Adora in her back seat was the most progress she’d made with her repressed issues then in the past thirteen years with any number of tequila shots or nameless girls. The results of that progress were nothing but disastrous in the beginning because  _ nothing _ was ever kind to Catra and had her bed surrounded by Wendy’s cheeseburger wrappers, but now her strength had returned, if only for a brief moment. So if they were going to work through this, they were going to work through this right now. “And then we can get on with our lives, Adora.” Catra told an empty car. “Where’d you disappear to? Like, I know you’re good at that, but why tonight?”

There was another part of her that knew that she white knuckled through a day of Bright Mooners, working a twelve hour day, and driving all the way out to the business sector of a city she 100% loathed. Catra knew exactly why when she closed her eyes she saw Adora’s stunning smile, the sparkle in her blue eyes, that cocky look she got when she talked about Catra being a stripper. Her stupid laugh, the irritating melody of her voice, they were haunting Catra in her sleep, and she knew why she was letting it happen without so much as one complaint.

Because deep down, Catra knew that when Adora was in her backseat, the loneliness that was eating her alive, along with years of constant self hatred that had left her with gaping hole in her chest, had met its match in Adora’s presence.

Catra was cracking and breaking at the seams, and Adora was the light that was finally getting in.

“Holy shit!” Catra’s nostrils flared and she shot up straight in her seat, angering the scar on her back. But the pain was nothing compared to the shock of her newest and perhaps dumbest epiphany of the night. “Do I like… hanging out with Adora? No!  _ Fuck  _ no! Why the hell would I like hanging out with that bitchy, gorgeous, idiotic, elegant-”  _ FWUMP. _

Her train of compliment lined insults were interrupted when out of nowhere, something hit her passenger door with enough force to shake the entire vehicle. “The fuck!?” Catra screeched, slamming herself against the side of the car and throwing her arms up in a poor attempt at shielding herself. Three seconds passed before her brain started to function again.  _ Um, was that… a body?  _  Rolling down the window, she shouted into the night “Uh, hello?”

_ What if it’s a dead body? Cause then I’m fucked.  _ But why would a corpse land on her car when she was in the upper west side of  _ Bright Moon _ ? Yeah, maybe in some of the places she’d grown up that’d be understandable and maybe even expected; when she was in high school Hordak had at least two different bodies dropped on his prized Mustang right in front of their house (or was it one body, but different limbs torn from it? Catra couldn’t recall). But in Bright Moon? If you were murdered in Bright Moon you’d be found dead wearing your Prada bathrobe in your immaculate bathroom that had been redone by the Property Brothers three weeks previously and they’d try your guilty ass husband but he wouldn’t even get parole.

_ At least a dead guy would make this night interesting. _

But it wasn’t a dead body. Not exactly.

“Oww…” moaned an all too familiar voice. The same voice that was chasing her in her dreams.  _ Jesus fuck.  _ Catra let her head hang, if only for a second.

“Adora.” It wasn’t a question because Catra knew the answer. For whatever- probably  _ dumb- _ reason, Adora had indented the side of the car, and it sounded like she’d hit the concrete after just as hard with her Hulkish body. Catra swung her door open and came over to the other side. Yep. There Adora was, splayed out on the sidewalk, back in the original yet still terrible gray pantsuit from the first night, a dopey grin on her face and her glazed eyes looking two different directions. Her Jansport lay next to her, all the contents spilling out on the concrete around her like an office supply halo. Catra couldn’t help but laugh at the disastrous scene. Tonight was gonna be a  _ blast. _

“Oh hi Caaaaatra!” hiccuped Adora. “Caaatraaa.” Her voice was all sing songy and it was giving Catra a strong urge to kick her with one of her steel toed boots. Because if she was on the ground and singing like some Disney Princess, it could only mean one thing.

“Hey Adora.” she started with a sigh, hands on her hips “Just getting a feel for what tonight’s gonna be like-”

“Why, you think you’re gonna-” she hiccupped “-get some? Get some of this?” Adora attempted to gesture to her chest, but mostly she just flailed her arms around in the general direction of her torso.

_ Ignoring that.  _ Catra pretended she didn’t feel the heat creeping up her neck and continued “- just how much did you have to drink tonight?”

“What’r’you talking ‘bout, Caaatra? I didn’t drink anything officer...” giggled Adora, turning over onto her side. “Imma… Imma go to sleep now.”

“Did you drink tonight, you moron?!” Catra crouched down and full on shrieked into her ear.  

Adora eyes flew open at the invasion of sound and suddenly Catra jumped back as she bolted upright to swing herself around. “YES! Lots! And I loooved it! Okay, officer? You gonna arrest me? Ha ha!” she tossed her head back and snorted. “Officer Catra’s gonna arrest. Ha! Maybe she’ll tie me up! Caaaatra….”

“Stop stretching my name out weirdo.”

Catra had dealt with drunk people her entire life. No longer did they faze her. Whether it was Hordak and his poker buddies, or Drag Queens invading her apartment and drinking all of her good tequila, Catra had learned over the years how to gauge when it was time to step in and help or when it was time to call it quits and hope she’d wake up the next morning having survived their drunk rage/partying. Looking at Adora giggling and drooling on the concrete Catra didn’t think she could cause any harm in her current state, even with those  _ hot  _ toned biceps of hers. (Because she was splayed out like a starfish, her jacket was loose and hanging around her elbows. Catra swallowed and tried not to stare at how ripped her freaking arms were. Because god _ damn. _ ) Besides, Catra couldn’t just leave her there.

Even though it would be  _ really _ funny if she did.

“You really don’t know how much you drank?” asked Catra, poking her nose with one her newly sharpened nails. Adora wrinkled her nose in response and Catra’s heart fluttered.  _ Damn it Adora. _

“Somethin’ like four… or twenty.” That didn’t explain anything. “Ha. Four twenty. Get it, Caaatra?”

Catra moved to lift one of Adora’s arms over her own shoulders. “Of what exactly, Princess?”

“Champagne?” she smacked her lips while whipping her other arm around. The second Catra tried to lift them off the ground, Adora turned to liquid and as a result, they went flying back onto the concrete. “Whee!”

“Son of bitch, Adora!” Catra squeaked, rubbing her ass. Grunting, she tried one more time to lift up Adora but holy  _ shit  _ she weighed a lot more than Catra was expecting and she sure as hell was not cooperating. “There’s no way you got  _ this _ shitfaced off champagne, Princess.”

“We had a party! At work! How wild is that?” Adora enunciated every word before dissolving into obnoxious laughter. “And there was champagne and brandy which is  _ gross!”  _ With that Adora swung herself backwards, and if not for Catra’s reflexes she’d had hit the ground again. Catching Adora’s entire body by only her arm resulted in a  _ loud  _ pop in Catra’s shoulder.  _ That’s probably not good. _ “Oh thank you, for catching me. You’re the best! Caaatra!”

“Uh huh.” Now they had to get back to the car.

“Oh, and there was vodka! Have you ever had vodka, kitty cat? Ha! Kitty cat!! GET IT? CAUSE YOUR NAME IS-”  _ BANG! _ Adora chose to scream those words right into Catra’s ear so, without thinking, Catra swung her by the arm  _ into  _ the car door. It wasn’t Catra’s fault drunk Adora was too fucking loud for her frazzled nerves.  _ Besides, it was a reflex.  _ “Ow… kitty cat, that hurt.” she whined, her cheek still kissing the window.

“This is above my paygrade.” panted Catra.

It took a lot longer than she would have preferred to get shitfaced Adora into the car, because not only did she gain several decibels in volume thanks to some hellish combination of brandy-vodka-champagne from what Catra could infer, but she also turned into a fucking toddler. “Okay, get into the car.”

“Kitty cat…” Adora ignored the open car door and reached out to touch Catra’s curls. “Caaatraa- _ OW!”  _ She was having  _ none  _ of that, so yeah, Catra shoved her into the seat and didn’t feel a single pang of guilt. Rather, she felt a smug satisfaction at Adora landing on her back and having to struggle to get back up after Catra pushed her. Served her drunk ass right for trying to touch her hair.

Huffing, Catra pointed to the seat belt. “Put it on Adora, I’m taking you home.”

“Oh you are?” she looked up at Catra with her glazed eyes. Her gross dopey smile had made a return and it was doing weird things to Catra’s heartbeat. “That’s  _ so _ nice of you, I’ll pay you a million bucks!”

“Shut up, student loans. Seatbelt, now!”

“No! You can’t tell me what to do!” then Adora stuck her tongue out at  _ spit  _ at her. A quick image of herself slapping that stupid expression off her disgustingly cute face flashed in her mind and Catra swallowed the urge to carry it out.

_ Are you  _ fucking  _ kidding me, Adora? Ugh! _ “ _ Stop  _ being so immature and  _ so  _ you and just put your damn seatbelt on!”

“When did you get so mean, kitty cat?” whined Adora, throwing her head back onto the seat. “I take BACK my million bucks.”

"I was always mean, Princess.” Catra sighed, rolling her eyes.

“No you weren’t. You were sweet. You were my  _ best _ friend. And now you’re grouchy!” Ignoring the hurt look on her face and the twisted feeling it left in her own stomach, Catra leaned on the door and watched Adora flail her hands around trying to look for her stupid seat belt. “Can’t… REACH!”

“Dude it’s right there.”

“I can’t find it! You find it!” Before she could process what was happening, Catra was being yanked by the fraying fabric of her tank top by Adora and her superhuman force into the car. If Catra hadn’t caught the rim of the car, she’d be  _ in _ Adora’s lap. But instead of that nightmare, Catra was in a different, yet equally terrifying, one. Now they were face to face, their noses a fraction of a centimeter from touching. The warmth of Adora’s breath Catra could feel on her skin, and the rancid smell of alcohol should have been flat out disgusting, but instead was drawing her in, like something inside her was begging her to close this infinite distance between them. Without even thinking about it, Catra started memorizing her the details of her pretty face: the sunstained freckles on her cheek almost invisible against her porcelain skin, the flecks of silver in her blue irises that seemed be mesmerizing her, the cracking pink lipstick on those lips that were  _ so  _ close.

_ Move, Catra, dammit! _ But she couldn’t. Adora’s hand twisted up in her tank top kept her in place, and the fact the Adora was holding her so fucking close by force alone had completely melted her brain and obliterated any sense of logic.

"Your eyes are so beautiful.” whispered Adora. Catra’s heart began beating so fast she swore it was going to fucking explode. Oh, so now she was gonna speak in a reasonable volume? How  _ dare _ she turn her on this much just by whispering? “I love your eyes. And… and your lips.”

_WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?_ Catra wanted to scream in the drunk girl’s face, but the words got stuck in her throat. In Adora’s ironclad grip, Catra was shaking. With anticipation, with fear, with excitement, she had no fucking clue. All she knew was that this moment had already lasted an eternity, and she wasn’t sure if that was such a bad thing. Was being this close to Adora such a bad thing? Well it was definitely wrong _;_ Adora was hiccuping up vodka and Catra had too much dignity too admit she _might_ be slightly horny for her long lost nemesis of all people. If she _did_ crave Adora’s touch, and that was a big _if,_ this is not how she wanted it. Only Catra couldn’t bring herself to move and shatter what was happening.

So leave it to Adora to ruin the moment. If that’s what this even was.

Before Catra could pull away, Adora inched a tiny bit closer, opened her mouth, and fucking  _ burped. In  _ Catra’s face. A full on belch that echoed into the quiet neighborhood.

“Jesus  _ fuck,  _ Adora!  _ Why  _ did you do that?!” yelped Catra.

Howling with laughter, Adora loosened her grip and flung her head back. “S’funny! That was funny.” she snorted again. Catra cut herself loose straight away, exhaling the breath she’d been holding, her stiletto nails digging into the skin of her palms so deep they could’ve drawn blood.

“God, you’re a pain in the ass.” muttered Catra as she slammed the door on a giggling and snorting Adora. As she walked to the other side of the car, Catra tried to swallow her abrasive arousal, running a shaky hand through her frizzy mass of curls. She’d sell her soul to push this feeling, this desire to be touched, to be adored, worshipped by the fucking goddess Adora thought herself to be, down with any sort of success, to lock it away forever. What kind of nerve did Adora even have, affecting her this way? Getting under skin and making her  _ feel  _ something?

_ Disgusting. Fucking disgusting,  _ Catra told herself over and over it practically became her new mantra as she started the car. Back in the back seat, Adora was mumbling to herself. “Gah!” she shouted before Catra could put the car into gear. “My backpack! You have to go get it, Catra!”

“Your backpack?”

“My jansport!” Adora slammed her body against Catra’s seat so hard it sent Catra flying two feet in the air. “It’s on the sidewalk, I left- I left it there. It has really really important stuff! I NEED IT! Please! Pleeaaase!” she begged with slurred words, shaking the seat with her iron grip. Catra rolled her eyes. Drunk or sober, Adora could throw one hell of a tantrum.

“I’m going, I’m  _ going _ Adora. Calm down.”

When Catra came back with the backpack, having picked up all the spilled contents (Adora had like fourteen different notebooks and not one, but  _ two _ daily planners, plus like three phone chargers, not to mention a huge case covered in rainbow sequins of what Catra figured to be pens when she shook it real hard) and shoved them back in it at random with the least care she could manage, Adora was lying on the seat, clutching her stomach and moaning obnoxiously.  _ Good she deserves it. And she deserves the bitch of a hangover she’s gonna have tomorrow. _

“I got your backpack dummy.” Catra said as she tossed back to her. Except in her careless stuffing of Adora’s shit back into the Jansport she’d conveniently forgotten to zip the thing up, and the contents she’d just picked up off the concrete exploded out of the bag and all over the back of the car. One of Adora’s notebooks, a thick hardcover with a sticker of a unicorn on the front, hit the drunk girl square in the forehead and Catra burst out cackling.

_ That’s for getting shitfaced, ruining my entire night and then almost kissing me! _

“Ow!” moaned Adora, lifting her head just a little bit to glare at Catra, “You did that on purpose!”

“Did not!” She scoffed, trying not to smile. “Now c’mon on Adora, you gotta pick all that stuff up or you’re gonna forget something.”

Adora pushed herself up and shook her head so hard blonde wisps started flying out of her messy ponytail. “No I’m not! I’m  _ smart  _ Catra. I’ll remember, pfft.” she then stuck her tongue out  _ again _ .

_ Of course she acts like a child.  _ Sighing, Catra knew she had to change tactics. So far her current strategy had resulted in a close call of a heated/hateful drunk makeout session and an empty nerd’s backpack. At this rate she’d never get Adora home in one piece.  _ What would Scorpia do? She’s always dealing with my bullshit whenever I got drunk... Holy shit am I  _ actually  _ gonna go this route?  _ “Look,” Catra mumbled making an attempt not to sound like such an asshole, cause yeah, they were doing this Scorpia style. “I’ll help you okay? But we have to clean this up, okay Adora?”

“Okay!” she perked up and started gathering her things. Catra handed her the empty backpack and as she took it, their hands brushed, sending that familiar electricity through Catra’s body. She shivered, her hair on her arm standing on end. A surprisingly comfortable silence overtook them as they picked the contents of her backpack off the floor. Catra could’ve gotten used to that, the peace and quiet, but  _ then _ Adora bolted up again and screamed, “Fuck! My keys! I think somebody stole them!” Catra watched her eyes narrow and her nose scrunch up, “CHAD! He stole my keys-”

“Adora?”

“Mmm, yeah?”

“They’re in your hand.”

Adora blinked a few times before looking down to see her ring of keys and little funko pop figure of Thor in her own fingers. Those wild eyes of hers went wide and she looked up at Catra with a shocked grin. “Catra! You found them, you got them back from asshole Chad!”

“Chad  _ never _ had them you doofus,-” Catra stopped herself knowing that arguing with drunk Adora would be as pointless and ineffective as arguing with sober Adora.  _ What would Scorpia try now…  _ Running her tongue over her teeth, she started over “-you’re right Adora.”  _ Never thought I’d say that willingly.  _ “I got ‘em back.”

“Aw, you’re being nice to me!” Adora giggled. Catra wondered if punching her straight in her stupid nose would get her to stop laughing all together; every time she laughed, her nose would scrunch up and Catra saw how her teeth weren’t exactly all straight and she was sick of thinking how cute and adorable it made her. Breaking her nose would solve that problem right? She shook the thought out of her head.  _ What would Scorpia do? What would Scorpia? Fuck, even ‘Trapta’s more patient than I am. Like a lot... _

“Don’t make a big deal out of it, okay Adora?” Catra told her and she gave an small nod that was disgustingly endearing. “Now I’m gonna take you home, so just take it easy.”

It was weird to be nice to her. Fuck weird, it was down right the complete opposite of her nature. How could one action be so anxiety inducing yet almost calming, like broken pieces falling into place, at the same time? Catra watched as Adora settled into the backseat, holding her backpack and keys with white knuckles, choosing to stare at the window. Part of Catra did of feel sympathetic to her sorry plight. Like actual real sympathy this time, and a lot of it, coming over her tired body and hitting her like a kick to the chest. The only reason Adora was probably even so fucking smashed was because work was a total shit show for her; it made sense she just took the first destructive opportunity to relieve some of that stress she got. Catra could understand that. She’d spent the last five years looking for destructive opportunities of her own.

Because sometimes it was easier to run away from the moment than to stand face to face with problems you had no chance in hell at escaping.

Adora didn’t wear that look well though. Drunk off her ass, drooling on Marshmallow’s custom leather seats, humming some song (why did it sound so familiar?) she didn’t even come close to pulling it off. Catra caught a glimpse of her own self in the rearview mirror as she stared at Adora’s pathetic figure, saw the deep dark circles under her own split eyes, the light scars that tore the focus away from her freckles, her grimace staring back at her. Looked like Catra didn’t wear the look well either.

_ But maybe this patience thing isn’t so terrible after all. It’s not even that hard, like fuck that.  _ she thought, a small smile creeping on her face.  _ Scorpia and Entrapta are gonna have to step up their game now that I’m playing.  _ They were almost through downtown and Catra hadn’t heard a peep out of Adora. Maybe she passed out.  _ Oh thank God- _

“It’s BORING back here!”

Swerving hard, Catra’s foot found the brake and the car came jerked to a stop. They’d gotten lucky. An empty road stretched before them, no construction for tonight. “Adora! Don’t scare me like that!” she shouted, panting heavily and shoving the curls that had flown into her face out of the damn way.

“There’s nothing to do back here!” whined Adora, still way too loud.

_ Keep it together, Catra. Marshmallow will still be able to tell no matter how good you are at cleaning up blood! Think Scorpia, think ‘Trapta.  _ “Yeah, that’s because it’s the backseat of a car, Princess. We’re gonna be home soon-”

“I wanna come up there with you!”

“I’m sorry what- What? NO! Adora,  _ what  _ are you doing-” but despite Catra’s attempts to stop her, Adora had plans of her own and proceeded to somersault herself over the front passenger seat, Jansport backpack and all, because apparently climbing over like a  _ normal  _ drunk person was too good for her.  _ What the  _ fuck  _ is even happening here? _

_ Right,  _ Catra gulped as Adora squirmed in the seat before turning to grin at her like a lunatic,  _ she never put her effing seat belt on. _

“Hiiiii.” Adora sung, reaching her hand out once again to touch Catra’s hair.

Intercepting her hand with the crushing grip of her own, Catra was close to blowing a fuse. “ _ Get  _ in the back, Adora! You’re not allowed to be up here! I could get in trouble, you idiot!”

She didn’t like, read all the rules during that screening Uber gave her, but she was almost certain that this was against at least  _ one  _ of them _.  _ Probably something along the lines of keeping both the rider and the driver safe, since the company was in already hot water for plenty of other shady dealings.  _ We’re gonna get pulled over because Adora  _ still  _ doesn’t have her seat belt on, and the cop is gonna tell the stupid company, and I’m gonna getting fucking fired for something dumb! Again! _

“Pffffft,” Adora’s gross spittle was getting on her face because no matter how hard Catra tried to push her away, Adora would fall right back. “You’re Catra! You don’t care about getting in trouble! Fuck the Man, I’m Catra! I have a sexy leather jacket. I’m so  _ cool!  _ And  _ edgy!  _ Look at me, I’m so hot with all my tattoos and piercings- ooh piercings-”

“Adora if you try and touch my ear again I’m gonna break your  _ fucking  _ hand!” growled Catra, grabbing Adora’s wrist again. Keeping her at arm’s length and concentrating on driving was getting more difficult by the second. “And by the way,  _ moron _ , I never cared about getting in trouble because I was just gonna get in trouble anyways! You were the golden child and never got in trouble, because I  _ always  _ took the damn fall!” Catra turned for a split second to glare at Adora only to be met with a blank expression. “Ugh, why am I even telling you this? There’s no way in hell you’re gonna remember it.” she mumbled, dropping Adora’s hand. It hit the dashboard with a thud.

The sounds of sniffling followed and Catra whipped her head around. “Really, Adora? You’re crying?”

“Why are you so mean to me?” she practically wailed.

Oh, right. Catra had been trying the whole “act like the benevolent roommate” thing. But then Adora rolled over onto the passenger seat and insisted on trying to touch her. After that, the whole “my-drunk-passenger’s-keeper” thing went in the garbage. _Wow, another thing I suck at._ It shouldn’t have surprised her that Adora was crying: first off, they somehow _always_ ended up here by the end of the night and second, drunk women cried. A lot. In the bathroom at bars they’d hit on her, and then they’d cry about their boyfriends, and Catra would call a rain check. Like even Scorpia in all her 6’6 wonder sobbed after drinking a bottle of vodka while watching the same video of a abandoned cat being rescued and nursed back to health by a golden retriever (“Look Catra!” she wailed _every_ time without fail, “its you and me!”).

“I didn’t mean to get drunk tonight!” Adora continued sobbing. This time she just let the snot and tears roll unabashedly down her face. Catra turned to look back at the road.

“Sure, yeah, whatever.” she sighed, “We’re almost to your house, see- there’s your stupid sign!” _ Whispering Woods,  _ the sign for Adora’s neighborhood in all its lit up glory, did not interest the crying drunk girl.

“We were,” she hiccuped, a little bubble of snot forming in her nose, “gonna be friends. I wanted to be your friend again. And I MESSED it up! Again!”

“Stop yelling, Adora.” Catra deadpanned. God, she was exhausted.  _ This  _ was exhausting.

“Do you hate me?” mumbled Adora, her voice falling to a whisper.

“I-” Catra stopped in her tracks, looking at Adora out of the corner of her eyes. She looked so sad, but also kinda like a dumb cartoon, with her puffy red eyes and wobbling mouth. She looked so defeated and vulnerable as she held herself, watching Catra for her answer, as if the words Catra held- whether good or bad- would most certainly crush her. She looked like she did when they were eleven years old, and Catra woke up in a bright white hospital room in more pain than she’d ever been in her whole life, Adora waiting there beside her, sniffling. It was her loud sniffling that had brought her back to consciousness. In that big hospital chair she’d shoved right next to Catra’s bed she looked so small, clutching Whiskers _ ,  _ Catra’s one and only stuffed animal.

_ “Catra, you’re awake! I’ve been here all night cause they said you would wake up.” _

_ “Adora… why am I itchy?” _

That was the word Catra had chosen to use in her pain induced delirium. Not much of her memory of that morning in the hospital room had been retained; she remembered that constant, burning ache in her back and that unforgettable sensation that something was really,  _ really  _ wrong. And that her entire torso was itchy. Not much else.

“ _ It’s probably because you were in surgery for a long time. The doctor’s had to put new skin on your back, isn’t that cool? They said it’s cause your burn was really, really bad. That parts not as cool. They stapled it to you. A nurse said it came from somebody else, but when I asked whose skin it was so I could tell you had she said she didn’t know.” _

At that was the very brunt and  _ gross _ way eleven year old catatonic Catra learned that she’d been given a mesh skin graft and now had the skin of a complete stranger  _ stapled  _ to her back.

_ “How are you feeling?” _

Itchy.  _ “It- it hurts.” _

“ _ Oh! I’ll go get the nurse! She can help you! Here! I brought Whiskers, he’ll make you feel better!” _

Adora was so eager to help that she never asked if Catra wanted to be left alone. Catra clung to Whiskers, waiting for Adora to come back in that big empty room, and stared at the red “Press for Nurse’s Assistance” button for fifteen infinite minutes. 

And that was only the beginning of the hell her recovery would turn out to be.

Tonight, crying in her front seat because she was wasted out of her fucking mind, Adora looked exactly as she did that morning all those years ago. All she was missing was that little stuffed cat in her hand.

Even after everything, the water heater incident, her adoption, the separate lives they’d led, even after all these years of carrying this torch of utter hatred for the girl who’d been her everything, Catra didn’t think she could hate her now. She was just too tired. What was it really worth anymore? It only got her one place: her stupid bed listening to Scorpia chew with her mouth open while eating a McDonald’s apple pie, and hoping Entrapta would get bored with her blow torch long enough for Catra to hear the damn TV.

“I don’t hate you.” Catra said, finally breaking the damning silence hanging between them. Adora’s voice warbled and she sucked it in all her snot. “But friends is pushing it.”

“You have arrived.” Catra’s phone informed them. Catra ignored it. In fact, she hadn’t been listening to the GPS all night. The way to Adora’s was ingrained in her memory. Parking the car at the curb, Catra let a deep sigh and turned to look at Adora.

“You like me.” that stupid, dopey smile of hers was back.

“That’s  _ not  _ what I said-”

“You like me! Catra likes me!”

“Stop putting words in my mouth, Adora-”

“Oh my God are we friends? We’re frieeeends! Can I touch your hair now-”  _ BAM!  _ “OW!”

Adora clutched her nose and groaned in pain as instant regret filled Catra. She pulled her elbow back, reaching out to a collapsing Adora who at the same time was trying to swat her away. “ _ Shit,  _ did I break it? Adora, fuck, I’m sorry. It- it was a reflex! Lemme see-”

“Mmmhgghhhh you always say that!” she moaned behind her hands.

“Please just let me see, Adora!”  _ If I broke her nose, I’m completely fucked. So much for progress. I  _ told  _ her to stop touching my hair!  _ “C’mon, just- just put your hands down.”

Adora sent her one last nasty look and took her shaking hands away from her face with a stubborn reluctance. Breathing a sigh of relief, Catra grabbed Adora’s face-  _ without  _ thinking- and brought it closer, squishing her red cheeks. “Oh thank God, it’s not broken! And it’s not even bleeding, halle-fucking-llujah.”

“Mmmmgh, hands... warm” Adora mumbled, her cheeks still in Catra’s palms.

“Huh?”

“You smell good. S’nice. Like nail polish… and cheese-”

“Okay-” Catra dropped Adora’s face, the fact that she was drunk completely escaping her glitching brain, and Adora’s head hit the armrest dead on, “-we’re done here.”

_ That  _ feeling had returned in full force. The warmth that came from being so close to Adora was spreading through her body despite her desire to turn to ice. For the  _ second  _ time that night, Catra let herself be way too close to Adora.  _ This has got to stop _ , she thought, ready to be adamant about keeping a ten foot distance to the girl who had an uncanny ability to set her skin on fire, when she remembered she had to get Adora  _ out  _ of the car.

“Oh fuck me.” she whispered at the realization. Adora’s giggling did not help, and neither did what she said next, “Only if you ask nicely!”

_ Oh, come on! _ Now that she had vanquished sobbing drunk Adora by actually being kind, confident and horny Adora had made a triumphant return. Grunting, Catra nudged open her door as Adora laughed so hard she began scrunching her arms up like some shitfaced t-rex. “Let’s go, Princess.” she exhaled, “let’s get you home.”

“Mmmmmmmkay.”

“ _Please_ tell me your roommates are home.” _Cause I don’t think you can get to your own bed much less up the fucking steps to your front door and I don’t even what_ _to_ think _about what that means._ “Like they don’t work any night shifts or anything-”

“ _ I  _ work the night shifts!” the passenger door flew open and Adora’s foot appeared.

“Did you just karate kick my fucking door open?”

“I go to Light Spinner Industries every night from 4 pm to midnight-  _ ugh _ my tummy,” Adora stopped her flimsy struggle to get out the car alone to clutch her stomach. Catra was determined to stay as far away as she could manage, but when Adora began slipping Catra was right there to catch her. “Awh, thank you! And then I get up at five IN THE MORNING-” she stopped mid sentence to burp, sexy “ -to open Glimmer’s bakery.”

“Uh huh.”  _ Damn  _ she was heavy.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Adora whispered in her ear. Her voice was hot and she was getting spit on Catra’s helix earring.

Struggling to pull Adora into a standing position, Catra nodded “Sure yeah, whatever you want.” It was hard to listen to anything she was even saying though, between the invading smell of Adora’s vanilla lotion ( _ like does she pack that shit on?)  _ and the fact that her motherfucking blouse was sliding up, and Catra’s hand grazed her abs for few glorious seconds and it literally broke her brain.  _ Does she have a fucking six pack-PULL  _ IT _ TOGETHER CATRA! _

“I don’t… I don’t really like getting up that early.” she mumbled as Catra walked up the first step and gestured for Adora to do the same. Only then did Catra notice one of her heels was broken; hence her trouble walking tonight.  _ Oh,  _ that’s  _ how she fell onto my car. _

“Not a single human being on earth likes getting up that early.” Catra told her.

Adora stuck her tongue out and flung her leg onto the second step.“Pffffft, I used to get up that early and run… a lot.”

“Of course you fucking did.”

“Ha ha ha… and now I bake cookies! COOOOOKIES!”

“Adora!  _ Be  _ quiet!” Catra hissed.

“I just do it, fuck I need- my keys, where’d they go…” Catra stood there as Adora wiggled around in her grasp looking for her keys in her stupid purple backpack, “oh, oh here they are. Yay!”

“Yay.”

“ANYWAYS-”  _ So we’re completely ignoring my incredibly polite request to shut up and not wake this fancy privileged neighborhood! I do not want to scolded and/or arrested!   _ “-I just do it because if the bakery shuts down, Glimmer will cry, and I  _ hate  _ it when people cry. ‘Specially… specially Glimmer. UGH, my tummy aches. Ah shit-” In Adora’s sloppy attempt to reach the fifth and final step, much of her weight about to snap Catra’s spine, she dropped the keys. “Oooh nooo…”

“Nope-” Catra jumped up four steps. Regretted it instantly. Her scarred back didn’t appreciate catching the rest of Adora’s limp body. “I have to get you inside, we have to get one of your roommates, Glitter or Bow, or  _ someone  _ cause I am not putting you to bed-  _ don’t  _ you dare say anything and stop! Laughing!” Pounding on the door, Catra prayed to whatever God that had abandoned them long ago that there’d be somebody on the other side to come relieve her.

“Caaatraa….Caaatraa. He he.”

Figuring the only way to drown Adora out was to keep knocking, Catra kept pounding her fist- as obnoxiously as she could possibly manage. Besides, she desperately needed something to hit. Her luck turned when a light came on in the window.

“I’m coming! I’m coming! Please stop knocking so hard on the door, I’m begging you! The wood is  _ vintage. _ ” someone, a distinctly male voice- Catra knew because it cracked- yelled from inside.  

“Yay it’s a rainbow!” Adora perked up at the sound of the voice.

“What the hell does that mean-” mumbled Catra, only to be interrupted by the door cracking open. “Uh, hey, I’ve got your roommate here-”

"BOW!”

The door flew open to reveal a young man, Catra figured he was around their age, wearing only a pair of boxers covered in cacti from what she could tell, and a crop top with the words  _ “Can you believe?”  _ written in rainbow, over an  _ actual  _ rainbow.

Adora?! Where have you been? Me and Glimmer have been worried sick! We told you, call us if you’re there till after midnight! Glimmer was so freaked out I had to make her like four cups of chamomile tea. Decaf of course, I’m not a monster.” Bow winked at her.

“Damn Princess, you didn’t tell me you had a curfew. And a babysitter.”

But Adora was way past any of Catra’s comments about the roommate standing before them in his boxers. She launched herself from Catra and onto Bow, who just so happened to catch her with ease. “Bow! Bow! Bow, this-” Adora threw her hand back and Catra barely managed to dodge “-is my Catra! She’s an Uber Driver! Isn’t she  _ soooo  _ cool?”

“Oh, okay Adora, that’s cool. Hi Catra, I’m Bow.” he said, extending his hand around Adora’s body. Catra took his hand and shook.

“Yeah. Guessed that much. Nice underwear.” she snickered.

“Thank you! I got ‘em on sale, MegaMart actually. They have surprisingly good deals!”  _ Son of a  _ bitch  _ did he just name drop MegaMart like that? With charm of all freaking things?  _ “Anyways, thanks for getting her home safe. I really appreciate it.”

“It’s really not a problem-”

“Uh oh.”

Wherever this conversation was going, it would never get there because Adora had gone white in the face, and began to gag. Years of instinct was screaming at her to move out of the damn way because Catra  _ knew  _ what was coming next, but something else overtook her. Motherfucking concern. “Adora?!” And then it was too late to move at all, because Adora had bent over and was now blowing chunks on her boots.  _ Ohhhh God... _

“She’s wasted, by the way.” Catra explained over the grotesque sound of hurling that turned into dry heaving, rubbing Adora’s back as they all just stood there waiting for her to be done.

Bow looked back from Catra’s vomit covered shoes to a gagging Adora. “I can- I can see that.” he leaned back, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry about your boots.”

All she could manage was a slight nod of her head.  _ This is revenge isn’t, dumb universe? Motherfucking revenge for all the times I barfed on Scorpia or Scorpia’s bed or Entrapta’s experiments or recorder or notebook or in her hair... Now Adora gets to barf of my only pair of boots that  _ aren’t  _ falling apart. _

The worst part was? Catra couldn’t even bring herself to be angry. Oh, she’d be  _ furious  _ later, but as of the current moment, all she wanted was to be done taking care of drunk, horny, depressed Adora and go home to take a motherfucking hot shower. She just wanted stand in the steam there pulling loose curls out her hair and decorating the tile with them until the water ran cold. Cold water was what she need anyway after learning Adora had a damn six pack.

“I’ll, uh I’ll take her off your hands. And make sure she tips you, like a lot.” Bow said as he lifted Adora and placed her over his shoulders.

Nodding, Catra started backing down the stairs. “Okay. Sounds good.”

“Thanks again Catra!” Bow waved one last time, ever the charmer. “Okay Adora, let’s get you inside and hydrated!”

“Mmmhgghgh.”

Why she stood there as long as she did, watching as the vintage wooden door closed and the light in the window faded to black, was a mystery to Catra. Adora was home now, safe and sound, and the adrenaline that had set in from having the clear goal of getting her here, abandoned her, slowly fading from her body.

And the pain returned to take its rightful place.

“Ughhhhhhh!” Catra drug her nails down her cheeks once she was back in the driver’s seat. “I need some fucking tequila and I  _ don’t  _ care what Scorpia says! I was a good person tonight! I helped her! I didn’t want too! Did I? Ugh, who even cares about this bullshit- huh?”

Something on the passenger’s seat caught Catra’s eye. One of Adora’s notebooks hadn’t made it, surprise surprise. It probably fell out when she practically tossed herself out of the car. Catra picked it up and ran her fingers over the soft black cover, her eyes finding the sticker of a unicorn.  _ It’s kinda like my sketch book. I think this is the same kind of notebook. Weird.  _ This was also the one she knocked Adora in the head with. “Ha!” she cackled at the memory.

_ Oh Adora… what have you left behind?  _ she wondered.

But not enough to care. Tossing the notebook on the seat, Catra turned the ignition and put the car in gear. She could worry about the notebook later. “Can’t believe I’m saying this but, Adora’s got the right idea. I need a fucking drink.”

_

Getting the tequila? That was the easy part. The liquor store was open across the street from Catra’s apartment was open until three in the morning. Sneaking the brown paper bag into the apartment? Now that’s where the challenge lay.

_ Please don’t let Scorpia be awake, please don’t let Scorpia be awake,  _ Catra prayed as she walked the dimly hall to her home,  _ please don’t let Scorpia be awake- son of a bitch!  _ There was a stream of light coming from the door which meant either Scorpia or Entrapta was awake. With the way her luck was going, they’d probably  _ both  _ be up and waiting for her, watching some made-for-TV movie. Catra let out a long sigh.

Shoving the tequila in her leather jacket next to where Adora’s notebook was, Catra opened the door with a shaky hand. God, why did she feel so guilty about this? All she was doing was going behind her roommate and friend’s back who had taken care of her all week that’s it. “Uh, hello?” she called out into the apartment.

“Catra!” a shrill voice greeted her, over the noise of tell tale whirring and buzzing from the kitchen and Catra exhaled. “You have returned! How was your shift? Tell me everything…”

“Oh, um-” Catra hissed as her back grazed the wall in her attempt to sneak through the door, “I promise I will, but uh, where’s Scorpia?”

“Sleeping!”

“Oh thank God.” With that, Catra removed her contraband from her jacket, and flung Adora’s notebook on the couch before flinging herself onto her bed.

_ Should I really be doing this? _ Catra asked herself again as she slipped the alcohol from the tearing brown paper. Her mouth was dry and her hands were shaking. The pain her back was reaching an unbearable level yet she’d run out of any kind of over-the-counter painkillers so she needed something,  _ anything. _

But it wasn’t good for her. It wasn’t good for anybody. It just fucking sucked to be in such agonizing physical pain after she’d spent the entire night looking in the mirror watching the pain she caused other people. “This isn’t fair!” she growled to herself, digging her fingernails into her palms. “Why does Adora get to be self destructive?”

And that was all the justification Catra need to pry open the bottle and take a big, satisfying swig. Only the satisfaction faded as the burn in her throat did.

_ Why does it taste like guilt?!  _ She moaned and threw herself into her pillow.

“Ooooh!” Looking up, Catra saw Entrapta shuffling in from the kitchen, her eyes trained on the fold out couch. The grease stained apron and thick leather gloves did  _ not  _ match the Pikachu onesie (courtesy of MegaMart and their employee discount) she was wearing underneath. “Could this possibly be the journal I misplaced 13.9 days ago?!” she clapped her hands and reached out to grab Adora’s notebook where Catra had thrown it.

“No, one of my passengers left it. I gotta give it back to her tomorrow.” explained Catra. That’s was the only real reason she kept it and not gone back to knock on the door. Adora and her would be back at it soon enough, crying together in her fucking car. Besides, how important could  _ that  _ one be compared to the million other notebooks in Adora’s damn backpack?

Entrapta stripped off her gloves, sat cross legged on the couch and started rifling through the notebook.  _ I probably  _ should  _ stop her,  _ Catra thought, that horrible twinge of guilt back,  _ it’s nobody’s business what’s in Adora’s stupid notebook.  _ God knew how many times curiosity bit Entrapta in the ass when she went through Catra’s sketchbook. “Trapta, don’t go through it-”

“Interesting… how interesting. This notebook contains several descriptions of some sort of blonde warrior goddess, as well as paragraph chunks that sound like book summaries…”

_ That  _ got Catra off her bed, abandoning the bottle on her pillow. Next thing she knew, she was crouching on the couch, looking over Entrapta’s shoulder. “Uh, what else does it say?”

“It almost reminds me of D&D character descriptions, but also with key plot points.” Entrapta scanned the notebook, “Hmm. That’s a cool name. She-Ra, Princess of Power-”

“Gimme that!” Catra ripped the notebook out of Entrapta’s hands and brought it to her face, bouncing on her toes. “Adora left her notebook with all her shit for her novel in it, holy crap! This is my chance to see if she actually has what it takes to get published and I actually have to go through with her deal…”

“What deal?” asked Entrapta.

Catra shooed her away, all her concentration invested in the goldmine Adora forgot in the front seat. “Nothing, it’s not important, go back to fixing the microwave.”

“Oh, I finished the microwave! I’m now experimenting with an increased water pressure for the faucet-”

“Yeah, yeah, go do that.” she said and put a finger to Entrapta’s lips.

“Well can I read the notebook later?” Entrapta asked as she climbed back over the couch, one of her purple pigtails whacking Catra in the face. “It was very enticing!”

Catra didn’t even think  _ she  _ should be looking at. This was a total invasion of Adora’s thoughts and privacy, but Catra figured she’d earned it fair and square, because Adora did throw up on her after all. But Entrapta didn’t know her- well they had known each other- but that was  _ three  _ years ago. One conversation about them in college wasn’t enough for Catra to gauge what their relationship had even been like.  “Tell you what, I’ll read it and then I’ll just tell you what it says.” That way if there was anything scathingly embarrassing or super personal Adora had written, Catra could just leave it out.

“Yay! You’re the best Catra!”

“Why does everyone keep saying that tonight?” But Entrapta was satisfied enough to go back to kitchen, giving Catra and all of Adora’s personal ideas some privacy.  _ Okay book, tell me all her secrets. _

“ _ She-Ra: Princess of Power, _ ” Adora’s messy print-cursive read,  _ “is that a good name? Brainstorming 11/13/15…”  _ Catra jumped down to the bottom of the page. “ _ Abandoned at birth on the planet Etheria  _ _ from Eternia?  _ _ Definitely an orphan-,”  _ Oh,  _ real  _ original Adora. _ “-raised by the bad guys… need a name for the bad guys.” _

“ _ 11/16/15. The Horde- bad guys, the enemy.” _

The next few paragraphs were dense. Catra couldn’t make out a lot of Adora’s writing- between her hybrid handwriting and the fact that she’d change pen colors in the middle of words, not mention the way she’d switch from bullet points to pieces of what Catra thought were maybe dialogue to actual paragraphs, she was wondering if she should have let Entrapta decipher it. Still, she figured out that a lot of what Adora was doing was she describing the planet the story took place on, Etheria she called it, as well as the sword of protection/power (she kept switching back and forth) her idea for multiple princesses with connection to gems that gave them powers. It all came off as very… flowery. No wonder her target audience was young girls, they’d eat this shit up. Yet Catra couldn’t make herself put the book down.

Flipping through the pages, Catra saw that over time Adora began adding characters. Glimmer and Bow made appearances as the Princess of Bright Moon and Master Archer. One page described She-Ra using the sword to turn a regular horse into a unicorn. Other princess were found in the next pages:  _ Mermista- Princess of the Sea, Perfuma- princess of nature/flowers??? Frosta- princess of ice and snow.  _ There was a whole page dedicated to some character dubbed  _ Sea Hawk,  _ with a bullet point written underneath that appeared in someone else’s handwriting, “ _ BOATS ON FIRE BABY!” _

What Catra saw on the next page hit her like a punch in the face.

_ Shadow Weaver, fallen sorceress tasked with raising She-Ra in the Horde.  _ “Holy shit.” whispered Catra. Her eyes flickered to the next page, choosing not to read the details Adora had written for their past caretaker. “HOLY SHIT!”  _ Lord Hordak, leader of the Horde. _

“Uh, okay Adora, write all in your friends into your stupid little book  _ and _ Mrs. Weaver and fucking Hordak of all people,” she muttered to herself, “but where am  _ I? _ ”  _ Guess I wasn’t that important after all... what the HELL Kyle, Rogelio and Lonnie made it?   _ They were listed on one page as Horde soldiers.  __ “But not me?!”

Catra turned the page so hard she almost ripped it out. “ _ Main Antagonist” _ read the title in red ink, but the page was practically blank. “ _ Dr. Alexander says I need some sort of middle ground antagonist???? An equal to She-Ra on all levels.”  _ The next page, titled  _ “love interest?????????????????”  _ was blank and the next couple of pages had been ripped out of her journal entirely.

“Oh, Adora...” Catra clicked her tongue, skipping back to the beginning. This shit was  _ gold. _

Her eyes fell to one of Adora’s many doodles; the thing was, Adora  _ could not _ draw, the journal revealed that much. Her ability to describe her characters was fucking uncanny that Catra thought for a second that this was all publisher material, but there was no illustrations besides some stick figure doodles. This specific set of scribbles Catra found herself staring at looked like a pair of dragon wings. “ _ Possible Horde logo?”  _ her writing read underneath.

_ It kinda… it kinda looks like it’d be a cool tattoo. A really bitchin’ tattoo.  _ Without much thought, Catra hopped off the couch and pounced onto her bed, pulling out the sketchbook that lived underneath her mattress along with the small tin of drawing pencils she hid from Entrapta. As she opened to a fresh page, she muttered to herself, “Let’s see if we can fix this-”

Before she could draw a single line, the sight of her illegal tequila caught her eye.  _ Oh shit, right.  _ In a swift movement, Catra grabbed the bottle off her pillow and dropped it the trash can, making sure to cover it up with over garbage. If it was found, and that was an  _ if _ , Scorpia would grill not only for bringing alcohol back into the house but also for taking it out to the recycle. And Catra was not risking a lecture, but she was not walking down three flights of stairs to find the complex recycle bin. Rather she went back to her bed and spent the next hour sketching out a better version of what Adora was going for as Entrapta belted out some BTS song.

As the sun was coming up, Catra leaned back to admire the several renditions she’d produced, and then opened the notebook to where she knew Adora had written the description of She-Ra.  _ “Eight foot tall, long voluminous golden hair, tiara with a ruby gem floating above, buff as hell…”  _ It went on for a while, getting more and more descriptive, and it even included a terrible stick figure drawing. Catra ran her tongue over her incisors, flipping to a clean page of her own identical book. “Okay Adora, let’s see if we can fix  _ all  _ of this…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess what you guys... we're switching POVs. The next chapter will be from Adora's perspective and well get to see what's been going through her head since the first night. it also means we're gonna meet the bakery crew, so that means glimmer, mermista, frosta, perfuma, my bi disaster boy sea hawk and more of everyone's favorite, bow!
> 
> one more shout out to my beta anna!!!!!
> 
> and i'd love to hear what you think of drunk adora. disclaimer: i've never been drunk before. i can't drink due to health and med complications so that's fun. one time i did have a sip of wine and ran around the house with more energy than i've ever had since i was like seven years old.
> 
> sorry about the length


	4. the only thing I control is the ache in my soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But Adora didn’t know real love, not like the the epic tale of romance she desired to put on the page, and she hadn't known any other struggle but the one inside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY TWENTBITEEN YALL!!!!!! 
> 
>  
> 
> i apologize for the wait for this update. I didn't get anything done during the holidays, but I hoped that if you celebrated, you had a good time. if you don't, hope you had a good week. 
> 
> okay so a few things before we start, this chapter ended up being so long that unfortunately, we don't see much of Adora's friends. that should come next chapter. next, this actually wasn't beta'd so i apologize for any mistakes that I didn't catch. also I have a love/hate relationship with this chapter.
> 
> once again thank you for your incredible support. your comments are amazing and read them over and over, especially when I get down and need motivation to write. i love you all so much, and wish you the absolute best in the new year.
> 
> and what better way to ring twentybiteen in with these two hopeless dorks?

There was about a million things wrong when Adora comes to the next morning. The way the pounding in her head was like a persistent warning that a bomb’s about to go off, or the way she was certain someone shoved her mouth full of cotton balls when she was in her brief coma (that she was beginning to wish she was still in), or the way her face and chest were flat on the floor but her legs were still in her bed somehow. The warning that woke up all her senses, the thing that was so out of place that her brain put together that something was wrong and that she needed to stop laying like a corpse in her own drool immediately, however, was the bright, burning morning light filtering through her window.

The stupid invasive stream of sunlight didn’t register, not at first. Nothing registered but the pain that radiated  _ everywhere.  _ Adora laid there for a while as her brain waltzed in and out of R.E.M. sleep, struggling to stay conscious. Her eyelids were packed with salt and mucus, but she somehow mustered the strength to tear them open after several minutes of this, only to be met with the blazing sunbeam from her window, her blush curtains drawn wide open. And boy, did the light burn, like the midday sun had a personal vendetta against her.

_Why are my stupid curtains open?_ That was Adora’s first coherent thought as the shining sun registered in her mind, her eyes shutting at the sight. The next thought had the volume of Sea Hawk with a megaphone plugged into Bow’s state of the art sound system. _The sun’s up? OH NO!_ _I’M LATE! I’M SO FREAKING LATE! OH NO OH NO OH NO! GET UP! GET UP STUPID BODY!_

Adora had not slept in this late since she’d torn her ACL and been hopped up on a hellish concoction of morphine and codeine and all she’d wanted to do was sleep and never, ever wake up. It had to be at least after ten in the morning, which would make her somewhere around five, maybe six hours late, if not later. Glimmer was going to  _ kill  _ her.  _ GET! UP! ADORA! _

Except every time Adora struggled to even lift her head off the rough carpet, her sore limbs failed her and she crashed into the floor. She tried moving her legs from off the bed, which she assumed she must have fallen out of half way at some point during the night, but found they were refusing to move either no matter how hard she wiggled.  _ I’m stuck _ .  _ Oh noooooo! _ This was going to make taking the quickest shower in the history of showers, getting dressed, and sprinting over to the bakery before her roomates noticed  _ much  _ more difficult.

“Why does everything hurt so bad?” she moaned, lifting her face from the floor, “Ahhh, my nose, son of a  _ bitch _ !” Shaky hands flew to her face upon the discovery that came upon  opening her mouth. “Owwwww….” It was like the time in high school one of her softball teammates whacked her in the face with a bat and consequently shattered her nose. When Adora pressed her fingers into her skin, biting her lip to keep from screaming- cause she did  _ not  _ have enough energy for that- she decided that it didn’t hurt enough to be broken, or so Adora hoped. The benefits  _ Mystacor, Inc  _ offered to their temps amounted to scraps and she seriously doubted they would cover a flu shot from a drug store pharmacy much less a trip to the emergency room to set her broken nose. The good news was that it only felt bruised, like the time she gave herself a concussion trying to pull one of Glimmer’s stubborn cookie sheet pans from the cabinet she had refused to organize the week prior. That was fun, explaining to her best friends that not only had she bruised her nose, and several other bones in her face, but also that she had given herself a concussion from the the rest of the pans and bowls spilling out of the cabinet and all hitting her on the head.

Bow and Glimmer took turns lecturing Adora on her self destructive tendencies the rest of the night as she iced her face with a bag of frozen cookie dough.

“What do you even mean ‘self destructive tendencies?’ It was an accident, Bow! How many times do I have to tell you guys that?”  

“An accident, Adora? Seriously? You could have easily avoided this if you’d just cleaned out the cabinet like you promised!” Glimmer told her, hands on her hips and disappointment written on her face. Adora broke eye contact, trying not to think about Mara’s many similar lectures and how Glimmer just looked so much like her in that moment.

Bow joined in. “Or you could have gotten another pan from the  _ other  _ cabinet underneath! That one was organized to perfection, and I know cause I organized it! This is like the third injury you’ve gotten this month alone, Adora! We’re just worried about you, that’s all.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about, they’re  _ just  _ minor!” Adora said with a nervous chuckle.

“Your nose is swollen like a balloon! It’s like someone punched you in the face!” Glimmer sighed and shook her head.

Shrugging, and then wincing, Adora replied “Yeah, but it’s gonna be fine! I’ll be  _ fine _ , Glimmer.”

“Adora, you stood at the register today and rang up an order that  _ no one  _ ordered! You charged your own credit card!” Bow told her.

“Yeah, about that-” she prepared for their explosive near parental like reactions, curling into herself, “-I think I might have a concussion.”

Lying there in too much physical agony to move, the guilt she was currently experiencing hurt a lot more than her nose or even her head.  _ I deserve this. All of this.  _ Adora was  _ supposed  _ to be at the bakery like every morning; her alarm- Gwen Stefani’s  _ Hollaback Girl-  _  always woke her up at 4:30 am, always, and then she’d ready herself to open Glimmer’s bakery at 5:00. That’s how it went, day after day, for the past year and half since opening day. Adora had volunteered herself to open because Glimmer struggled with getting up before 8:30 on the dot and usually spent another twenty minutes still in bed snoozing alarm after alarm until Bow coaxed her out of bed with her signature Starbucks order. So much preparation had to be done before the bakery opened at 9 am that one of them had to make the sacrifice, so in exchange for her mornings, Bow and Glimmer would close and give her the night off to write. (And then she got a gig vis-a-vis Glimmer’s aunt, so now she her nights were gone and her writing was out the stupid window.) Adora assumed working the morning shift was going to be a breeze; she was already used to waking up that early to work out anyway. It should have been an easy promise to keep, but if the sunlight was any indication, Adora had failed. She’d failed one of her friends.

Again.

What the hell had even happened last night? Adora knew she must’ve been drinking, and consumed enough alcohol to be as hungover and nauseous as she was, but no other memory of the night before stood out. Closing her eyes, she tried to picture the previous night.

“I can figure this out.” whispered Adora. With a brief rush of strength, Adora tried again to push herself up off the floor, “Come on  _ Adora,  _ you can figure this out, damn it! Just get up!”  _ Fwump!  _ Her legs hit the floor and she breathed a shaky sigh of relief. At least her core was wouldn’t be aching from the way her body insisted on being stretched between two different places. In the long list of things that hurt like a bitch in her body, that would no longer be one of them. That only left her aching head, her tumultuous stomach, her nose for some weird reason, and her limbs that had turned to jello. “Damn it.” Adora panted. If she couldn’t even get off the floor, how the hell was she supposed to work a full shift? Bow and Glimmer were counting on her she couldn’t just lie here for the rest of the day! Even though she and her stupid stomach really wanted her too.

“I should just call them.” her fingers curled into the carpet.  _ And admit to them I failed.  _  “I guess I have to find my phone first.” Adora lifted her head, her vision blurry and did her best to scan the room for her cell phone. In a turn of good fortune, it was laying on her charger on her night stand.  _ Wonder who did that? I doubt drunk me could even remember where the charger is... _ Adora dragged her body across the floor like a soldier and found the phone, along with a handwritten note and four bottles of water that had not been there the night before. She stared at the note for a solid two minutes. Baby blue cardstock, immaculate cursive, and scratch-and-sniff sticker of a big purple heart. Yep, this note was definitely written by Bow.

_ “Adora! Hope you’re feeling okay-”  _ Adora read as she opened the note, “- _ you had a pretty rough night.” _

“Yeah, I’ll say.” she whispered, clutching her rumbling stomach. Licking her dry lips, Adora tasted left over bile and gagged just the slightest.

_ “Listen, since you got pretty drunk last night we figured you were going to have a hangover, so Glimmer and I opened for you today. Don’t beat yourself up about it though! You can make it up to us once your feeling better.”  _ Adora chuckled. Bow knew her really well. He should have also known that it was not going to stop her guilt in any way shape or form. _ “Make sure to take good care of yourself. I put four bottles of water on your night stand, drink ALL OF THEM! Slowly, though, that’s the key. Glimmer made some french toast and scrambled eggs, so eat those once you feel up to it. They’re in the fridge. Ooh! I also made you one of the protein shakes you like so much! I hope it’s too your liking. Call us when you get a chance! Love, Bow. XOXO!” _

Adora glanced at the water waiting for her on the nightstand, swallowing what little moisture she had in mouth. Just the thought of taking a couple sips or even smelling the food Glimmer made her (food she usually would eat so fast she’d barely even chew; what could she say, Glimmer was a  _ really  _ talented chef) had her wanting to hurl all over the carpet. But she doubted there was anything in her stomach to begin with. “I have to start somewhere.” So with that, Adora twisted open one of the water bottles and checked her phone. 11:02 am, the time read, the white text reaching out crushing Adora’s heart with that damning feeling of inadequacy and failure.

A notification for 20 messages along with a silenced alarm, four emails, and a DM from Instagram appeared on her lockscreen of her, Bow, and Glimmer posing the day that went to that karaoke room in downtown for Perfuma’s birthday. When Frosta had taken the picture, they were all singing over each other in a disastrous attempt to follow the lyrics to  _ Fergalicious _ . (It went without saying that Bow outshone all of them.) Adora smiled at the memory only to regret it within seconds. Apparently her bruised nose did not agree with letting her feel happiness. “Ughhh…”

Most of the messages were from Bow and Glimmer, asking if she was up yet and inquiring as to how she was feeling. Surprisingly, the rest were from Mermista.

_ Mermista,  _ 9:02 am

“heyyyyyy do you know any good chinese restaurants?”

_ Mermista,  _ 9:45 am

“yo i need you to like answer babe.”

_ Mermista,  _ 10:15 am

“Adoooooooooooooora come on. wtf i’m tryna one up sea hawk he wants to take me someplace nice on our next outing.”

Outing was the term her close friends Mermista and Sea Hawk like to use instead of date, like normal couples. Because Mermista was either uncomfortable with and/or terrified of commitment while Sea Hawk was so desperate he once offered to sell his both of his kidney just for a fleeting moment in her presence. Sea Hawk wanted to give their relationship some sort of label but Mermista said if they did she’d jump off the Bright Moon Bridge, and in the end it was Frosta who had helped them come to this compromise when Perfuma’s suggestion of mediation ended with Mermista strangling Sea Hawk. He loved  _ every _ second of it.

_ Mermista,  _ 10:34 am

“oh shit Glimmer just texted and said ur hammered. nvm i’ll just text perfuma. byeeeeeee.”

Adora just shook her aching head. Couldn’t Mermista just Google it? As much as she loved her friends, she was in no mood to deal with them. She was in no mood to deal with anything.

_ Big surprise there,  _ a voice in her head whispered.  _ You’re such a wet blanket, you know that? _ But Adora couldn’t help her moodiness; between opening shifts at the bakery, covering Bow’s shifts during the lunch rush so he could work on applying to grad school, and working at that stupid business she was losing pieces of herself faster than she could recover them. Covering for Bow meant giving up her time at the gym. Temping meant losing her nights and therefore losing her time to write; that didn't affect her depressed mood at  _ all _ . It was coming up on a month and she’d written less than 100 words for  _ She-Ra.  _ The documents Adora opened on her laptop started empty and stayed empty because no amount of brainstorming for new or current characters or worldbuilding when she could squeeze in the time to open her main notebook was curing her damn writer's block and it was killing her slowly. She still lacked a main antagonist and love interest. Every single idea she’d come up while talking to herself in the shower or while typing up fucking Chad’s sales report because that fuckboy couldn’t do it himself (what? Her best ideas came when she was working out and God knew she could barely get a light jog in, so this was all she had.) were complete and unrealistic cliches. They were empty figures with no basis in reality and no emotional connection to her own life whatsoever.

Dr. Alexander had always said “write what you know, use what’s inside you to push the boundaries” and that’s why she’d written Glimmer and Bow and the rest of her ragtag team of depressed millennial rebels and even Mrs. Weaver… but Adora didn’t know real love, not like the the epic tale of romance she desired to put on the page, and she hadn't known any other struggle but the one inside her.

Adora was stuck. Stuck in her job, stuck in her story, stuck in her rut of a life, stuck stuck stuck.

“Ughhh.” she took another sip of the water, trying not to gag as it went down her throat. This is why she didn’t drink, Adora reminded herself as she whipped open her night stand drawer and rummaged for a bottle of Tylenol. Mara had been adamant Adora never even  _ think _ about it when she was in highschool. There was never any wine or beer or even champagne in their house so long as they lived there, and when Adora moved in with Razz, Razz bought a storage unit just to keep her vodka and aged bourbon as far away from her as possible.  

_ “You know a drunk driver killed Aria and Aaron,”  _ Mara would always say whenever Adora asked to go to someone’s house for a sleepover or to study and that person’s parents just happened to have alcohol in the house (Mara always called and checked), “ _ so I don’t want you drinking, Adora. Just promise me no drinking.” _

Mara didn’t speak of Adora’s birth parents often, and she spoke of their deaths, the deaths she blamed herself for right up until her own, even less. Were it not for the evidence of her own investigations Mara left behind, Adora would know almost nothing about them. But the more she learned about Aria and Aaron Reign, the more she learned about her godmother, the more she learned about Sharon Weaver and her dealings with James Hordak, the more Adora began to believe that the story about the drunk driver and the fiery car crash was a fictional and cliched coverup.

It certainly sounded like a really lazy origin story.

Adora obeyed the no alcohol rule to a strict fault even after Mara’s death, right up until her 21st birthday (her friends wouldn’t let her get away without celebrating  _ properly _ ), and every time she did drink after coming of age, her stupid drink would always taste like guilt and the paranoia her irresponsibility was going to end if the orphaning of a infant girl and her… Adora proceeded to pop five of pills in her mouth and swallow before she could even finish that incredibly painful thought. How she managed to get past the thought of how alcohol killed her birth parents and single handedly destroyed her only real chance at a family last night was kind of blowing her mind. She figured she was either in a fantastic mood or in a super crummy one when she went into work last night, and just powered through her guilt because it just the better or more enjoyable option.

“Knowing Chad and Dave and all the stupid others it was probably a shitty one,” she mumbled to herself. “Stupid work, stupid Chad, stupid-  _ ohhhhhh.”  _ Now it was coming back to her.

_ Light Spinner Industries  _ had closed some big deal with  _ Snows Incorporated-  _ Adora didn’t know the details of the closure since she was a temp and therefore was too “stupid” to comprehend the intricacies of the business world, what a load of absolute bullshit- but her reigning dickhead of a boss Martin thought it was “work appropriate” to bring a few spirits to the office for a late night celebration. “Since we’re not on the clock,” he winked at them. But Adora  _ was  _ on the clock because they kept making her close, so she went back to the corner where they stuck her desk and tried- and failed- not to think about Mara.

Opting out of their dumb party was not an option it turned out. Adora wanted to get her work done as fast as she could do so with efficiency, and maybe with her coworkers distracted she could actually pull out her notebook and get some work done. She was beginning to think taking it with her was rendered pointless as those dickheads always found some other menial task to take up her time while they all clocked out, but she couldn’t bring herself to part with it. It was the only thing that gave Adora hope in that tiny cubicle shoved all the way in the back, hope that she had actually had a future, hope that she was not going to let everyone in her life who had sacrificed something for her down by rotting away in the back of some capitalist cornerstone.

Only no extraordinary breakthroughs would be happening with She-Ra tonight, because her dumb coworkers just  _ had _ to make it a competition.

“Oh Blondie, you’re not wimping out on us  _ already? _ ”

“Go away Chad.” Adora tried to keep a level head, eyes locked on her computer screen, even though on the inside she was seething and entertaining thoughts of castrating him.

“Hey guys, Blondie-” because saying her actual name would be too humanizing in the workplace “is being a total pussy, big surprise. Like I get Teresa turning it down, but you Blondie? Told you she wouldn’t bite, Dave. Dave, you remember that girl with the highlights that was a total bitch- oh I’m sorry, Blondie, know you don’t like me disrespecting women- she was acting like a slut, that’s not a bad word right, Blondie? It was that time on your Dad’s yacht she was acting like she all into you wouldn’t drink like _someone_ over here. What are you, some kind nun Blondie?”

_ Ignore him Adora. Be the bigger person and he’ll go away in a few minutes,  _ she tried to tell herself even though the more Chad talked about nailing this poor girl because the were both “hammered” the more force Adora used to crush her computer mouse.

“You know,” he leaned over, vodka on his hot and disgusting breath, “I thought dykes like you were into the whole fancy alcohol scene. We got like champagne, with bubbles, thought  _ you  _ would like that. But nah, you’re just all talk...Blondie.”

“Line em up then, Chad!” Adora stood from her desk, knocking him off her desk, the office oohing and aahing around them. But Adora didn’t care. She was tired of Chad’s blatant misogyny and his god awful homophobia. She was tired listening to his “harmless” comments and watching an office of fifteen people stay quiet when he made them. She was tired of HR saying it was doing no damage. She was tired of not getting to beat the shit out of him when she knew she could just lift him up and throw him out the window and her coworkers would probably  _ thank  _ her. She was just done. “Let’s do shots, right now. You and me! Last one standing is the winner.”

He gulped, his hand slipping on the papers on her desk. “Um- shots, yeah. I can totally take you at- at that.” Adora took great pride in the way his dumb voice shook as she glared down at him (in her heels she had about three inches on him) “let’s- let’s do that then.”

Adora’s memory began to blur there. She could remember the first shot of vodka, tequila, bourbon, she didn’t know, burned like hell down her throat, and the next made her dizzy and slightly tipsy, and by the third there was no feeling left at all. No images of mangled bodies pulled from a wrecked, burning car. No echoing lament of her godmother. No guilt, no anxiety, just the high of her pride as she watched Chad black out and crumple onto the floor. Another few shots to celebrate, her coworkers chanting “chug! chug! chug!” and her memory faded to black.

“ _ Why _ did you do that? Why?!” moaned Adora, her face in her hands. She wanted to kick herself she was so mad. Yeah, Chad deserved it but at what expense? The expense of  _ somebody,  _ or maybe even  _ lots _ of people. Why couldn’t she just leave that asswipe alone, and trust that he’d get his eventually at someone else’s hand? It’s what her friends would have done; given the chance Perfuma would give you a motivational speech-sermon type lecture about the intrinsic beauty of karma. But Adora wasn’t Perfuma. She was far from skilled with radical acceptance and forgiveness whether it was with Chad or Mara... or even herself. Besides, how could she blindly trust some cosmic force to make sure that rich fuckboy had his ass handed to him when it would be  _ so _ much more satisfying to do it herself?

_ Because there are consequences. There are always consequences. _

“What was I even  _ thinking- _ why am in pajamas?” Adora wondered out loud, looking down at herself. How she got drunk, that mystery was solved. What happened after she blacked out? Adora had no clue where to even start. “Who brushed my teeth?” She didn’t feel any plaque, not even on the backs of her molars. Her breath was straight up nightmarish and her lips tasted like she vomited a grand total of fourteen times last night, but someone had brushed her teeth  _ and _ her hair. They even went as far as get her out of her atrocious pant suit and dress her in clean sweatpants and her soft pink hoodie. Glancing at the framed picture on her night stand, the one of her and her two selfless altruistic roomates posing together at graduation, realization came upon her fuzzy brain. “You guys… you didn’t have to do this. Cook for me and clean me up, take care of me... You should’ve just left me at Light Spinner Industries.” she sighed, looking at Bow and Glimmer’s giant goofy smiles as the waved the diplomas they’d almost died to get around in the air in the picture and her heart swelled. “I don’t deserve you guys.”

If Adora could’ve given them the world for everything they had done for her, she would’ve dropped anything and everything to do so. Glimmer and Bow accepted her as one of them, stayed up with her the nights after Razz passed, took care of her after she pulled the stunt that ended her athletic career and took down all her opportunities with it. They threw their love and excitement into She-Ra, offering themselves as templates for her story and coming up with wild ideas of their own. Glimmer researched publishers and Bow even helped build an online community to help get her noticed. “If you abandon this story- and it’s okay if you do,” Bow had said to her one day when Adora had been driven to frustrated tears over not having a love interest or an antagonist and was on the verge of scrapping the whole damn thing, “you’re abandoning something really special, Adora. Think of all the good you could do by writing this! Think of all the people who could see themselves in this story! What you’re doing is amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I happen to be the basis of a very handsome character. Please don’t give up on She-Ra, Adora.”  

“If you give up on She-Ra, I will  _ literally  _ kill myself!” added Glimmer, breaking the hug she was smothering Adora in.

“Okay, Glimmer’s coming on a little strong,” Bow sent Glimmer a look but Glimmer only nodded emphatically, “but she’s got the right idea.”

They were her rock, her motivation, her unwavering support system, her general source of happiness. Her found family.

Her everything.

And now? Now she’d probably spent all night puking on both of them while they dressed her in pajamas and made sure she went to bed  _ in  _ her bed. Glimmer made her favorite foods for breakfast and got up early to open even though she’d once announced that she’d rather “makeout with Sea Hawk, tongue and all” than wake up willingly before ten o’clock.  _ I’m never going to be able to repay them,  _ she thought, taking a deep breath. Her body was somewhat more relaxed now, the tylenol and water had found their way to her blood stream and were starting to ease the throbbing pain. “I’m probably going to have to actually pay Bow back, he definitely got me home…” Adora said out loud to her empty room. She snorted despite her bruised nose. All she could imagine was herself on one the gray office phone begging with seriously slurred speech for Bow and/or Glimmer to come pick her up. None of them had a car, not even Glimmer because she refused to let her mother’s money buy her something her friends could not afford, even though Bow insisted it would benefit all three of them. “Maybe Bow called like an Uber for me or something…” Adora chuckled. They could barely afford to use a car service either. “Uber…” Adora chewed on her lip, her mind chasing something. A sense of something akin to deja vu came over her. Then, with horrible realization, everything piece of this disaster she’d been missing fell into place, and she gasped.

“Catra!”

-

As of now, Adora had been on hold with Uber for 42 freaking minutes and was getting close to chucking her phone out the window (curtains closed finally) and looking for other means of contacting the girl she knew had taken her home last night. The girl that walked back into Adora’s life.

Or more, Adora had stumbled so rudely into hers. That was best way she could describe Catra’s attitude to being reunited.

“Your call is very important to us and your patience is appreciated…” the automated voice on the other line said for the millionth time.

“Gah!” grumbled Adora, “stupid robot! I just- I just want Catra! I mean,” she coughed, “I want to talk to Catra! Come back Gary!” There was a chance she was still a little drunk, right?

Gary was the man who had answered the phone, all of forty five minutes ago. All Adora wanted was Catra’s phone number, or at least an email address, so she could apologize for her drunken behavior since it had finally clicked in her mind who had gotten her home last night.

And make sure she hadn’t lost her friend  _ forever  _ this time because she had to have a pissing contest with her idiot coworker.

Her excuse of “I left my keys and wallet in her car” worked well enough, but Gary ran into a snag when Adora didn’t know Catra’s last name. Adora remembered it was Leon when they were in Weaver’s care. Except Gary couldn’t find a Catra Leon in their system.

 _She didn’t lie about her name to this company did she?_ Catra was over the top secretive, so Adora wouldn’t put it past her. “Um, try Hordak?” Even saying out loud had Adora wanting to hurl. (It would mostly be dry heaving because there was still nothing in her stomach; she couldn’t bring herself to eat Glimmer’s food just yet.) But Adora figured it was worth a try. According to Mara’s files, Hordak changed Catra’s last name to his own when she was was fourteen. Records showed that he hadn’t adopted her despite the name change.  

“No Ms. Hordak ma’am.” responded Gary. A mixture of relief and frustration filled her veins.  _ That means she got rid of Hordak’s name, Thank God! But also Catra why did you make it so hard to find you? _

“I don’t know anything else about her, Gary.” Adora told him when he inquired further. “I just.. I really need to find her… because I need my keys! I  _ really  _ need my keys” Adora corrected as quickly as she could.

“Excuse me one moment.” The hold tone followed.

That had been forty six minutes ago. Their crappy hold music was beginning to get on Adora’s exhausted nerves but she refused to hang up. This was her only shot. There were no other ways of finding Catra, Adora knew that now.

After the first ride home, Adora looked for Catra. Her emotions were a hellish tornado tearing through her system and she’d knew that if she didn’t keep working, they would tear her to pieces. And maybe that’s what she deserved. Sleep wouldn’t come to Adora, not when all she could think about was her best friend acted like a stranger who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her, so she stayed up on her phone looking for Catra on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, even on Pinterest and tumblr. Link after link, friend of a friend of a friend, Adora found nothing. She even googled her, but there was nothing, no one on the other side.

When the internet and sleep failed her, Adora reached under her bed and pulled out Mara’s box. It was one of many from Mara’s investigations in trying to find her, but Adora kept this one close for many reasons. Reasons that were painful and personal. Adora began going through Mara’s files one more time, tossing the file with death and birth certificates far away, knowing nothing in it pertained to Catra. After some digging, Adora found the batch of files containing information about Weaver’s orphanage and the kids being kept there. Catra was in there somewhere.  _ Aha! _

_ “Catra Maria Leon,”  _ when Adora first read the file back when she’d been bequeathed Mara’s belongings at nineteen and the first time she really tried looking for Catra, she’d felt a little betrayed at seeing her full name. Growing up, Catra enjoyed teasing Adora, insisting that her middle name, Marie, was a dumb middle name and refused to say what hers was. “ _ Brought to Sharon Weaver’s care at the age of four. Birth mother: unknown. Birth father: unknown.”  _ Yeah, so that was all a lie, or just more of Hordak’s smoke and mirrors. Adora knew after the second night. She just didn’t know that night as she looked through the rest of the file only to remember it was blank and even less help than the internet. All of Mara’s work on Hordak revealed nothing either; only that Catra’s last name had been stolen from her, Hordak had  _ not  _ adopted her, and there were no whereabouts to where Hordak even was. Just that he was a dirty criminal using the foster system to cover his tracks and abusing the children that came his way, turning them into criminals just like him.  _ Thanks for nothing, Mara,  _ Adora thought bitterly to herself as she threw the files off her bed, tears coming to her eyes. But not every file fell to the floor. Something had been left behind. A photograph.

Adora brought it closer. It was of her and Catra, the Halloween before Mara came and only a couple of short weeks before Mrs. Weaver tried fixing the breaking water heater by herself. Living as orphans meant they were too poor to buy costumes, but Adora always encouraged the other kids to make them, even if they always got picked on by the rich older kids. That’s probably why Catra was wearing cardboard cat ears, laughing at Adora’s ghost costume. Mrs. Weaver wouldn’t let her use a sheet, so Adora made do by cutting holes in her pillowcase. Rogelio made a lizard snout out of an old milk carton, Kyle found a dirty wig and told everyone he was Lonnie, and Lonnie, who previously wasn’t even going to trick or treat because they always got bullied and Mrs. Weaver confiscated almost all of their candy, changed her mind and went solely to beat Kyle up as many times as she could manage. The night was nothing short of disastrous. Kyle kept tripping because Lonnie kept tripping him, so Rogelio and Lonnie fought the whole time and Catra whined about the fighting while Adora tried to lead them forward with Catra clinging to her the whole time. Then the rich kids found them, and this time they were on bikes and they had eggs, so it was a full on sprint back to the orphanage.

_ “You should have let me take them, Adora.”  _ Catra complained later, her mouth full of chocolate. Ever the evil witch, Mrs. Weaver had them hand in their candy but when allowed Adora to hold onto hers. Adora didn’t want it after that, and would spend the next month “sneaking” candy into the rest of the kids’ lunchboxes in hopes they wouldn’t hate her anymore. The rest she split with Catra after sneaking up onto the roof that night.

“ _ Why? Did you  _ want  _ to be egged more? _ ” Adora was busy picking shell and yolk out Catra’s wild mangy curls, Catra hissing every couple of seconds as Adora yanked on a tangle.

_ “Ugh, you never let me do anything Adora!” _

_ “That’s not true Catra!”  _ those sparkling split eyes glared back at her, “ _ Fine! You can beat them up  _ next _ Halloween. But you have to let me help next time, okay?”  _

There wasn’t a next time.  

“I hope we're not done with each other, Catra.” Adora had whispered as placed the photo by the framed one of her, Bow, and Glimmer. Maybe that’s why Adora had pulled her phone back out even though it was reaching 2:00 am and left that stupid review on the Uber app. A measly attempt to reach out one last time. Because there was just too much left unsaid for Adora and Catra to be done with each other.

Done with each other they were not, the second ride proved that much.

Yeah, Adora only allowed herself to take an Uber instead of the bus that first night as splurge since that day of work had been hell, and it was fiscally irresponsible to keep requesting an Uber, but Adora couldn’t help herself. She was going to find Catra if it killed her, if it didn’t drain her savings first. And then eleven useless Uber rides home later, Catra came back to the west side of Bright Moon. Thank God, Adora was getting real tired of making small talk with those old men and explaining to them that  _ no,  _ she did not have a husband,  _ or _ kids. Seriously, how old did they think she was? It was the pantsuit, wasn’t it?

Catra was a wanted change of pace.

The weirdest part was that at first they were flirting with each other. Like a lot. And Adora was enjoying, a lot. Catra was… stunning, on so many levels. That didn’t go over Adora’s head the first ride. She was this edgy kind of beautiful, a level of “look but don’t you dare touch.” So much about her was different, her slender yet defined curves, the leather jacket and boots combo that Adora did not know she was attracted to until stumbling into her car, the way she kind of smelled faintly like cinnamon and nail polish remover. Her sharpened black nails and series of piercings were meant to act as warning to stay at arm’s length, but they were just drawing Adora closer. But Adora’s Catra was still there too, the sarcastic, quick witted, and even sometimes sweet Catra. The extreme defense of cynicism was new, but she still had those cat-like fangs, those long dark curls that Adora had been jealous of since the day they’d met, the constellation of freckles on her cheeks. Catra hated her freckles when they were little. Adora loved them.

And Adora knew it was dangerous to be acting with this way with Catra and she wasn’t about to let the way she was  _ very _ much attracted to her get in the way of the things they needed to discuss. What they had begun was fragile and delicate. But it was comfortable, almost too comfortable, to have this flirtatious rapport with her old, now smoking hot (like  _ holy  _ shit), friend. And the way Catra kept calling her Princess? It was doing funny things to her, and Adora didn’t for one second want her to stop.

Everything fell apart when they hit traffic in a glorious explosion of painful truths and raw emotions Adora hadn’t prepared herself for. It was  _ all _ her fault too. One minute they were talking about her clothes, the next Adora realized she hated her job even though she’d promised herself to give the job a  _ little  _ more time-  _ so  _ much was riding on it- and then Adora found herself telling Catra about She-Ra (even though Catra thought it was dumb, that didn’t sting in the slightest) and it just hit her how little work she’d gotten done in the last few weeks. The full force of rejection dawned upon as Adora realized how long it had been since she’d started reaching out to publishers only to be told “we’ll get back to you,” and how they never, ever did. All of her sacrifice was going to be for nothing, and she would be no one. Adora lost her temper, her frustrations at her failures exploding at the seams, and before she knew what was happening, Catra’s claw-like nails were in her knee pinning her down, and they were screaming at each other about the damn car.

_ “You think you’re so special, Adora? That you hold some special place in my heart? Well guess fucking what, Princess!”   _ Every word was like a knife in Adora’s heart, “ _ You’re not! You’re just like everyone else that doubted me! You’re just like everyone else that left! ” _

_ But I never meant to leave you. I never  _ wanted  _ to leave you. _

Because Adora had never said goodbye, not the way she wanted to, because she never could call, because she never found Catra, she had in all sense, abandoned her. That was how Catra saw it, that was what Catra believed. With tears streaming down her face ( _ when  _ had she started crying?) Adora realized that nothing she could say, no details that exposed the truth, that could change her mind.

And maybe those details didn’t matter that much at all. Maybe it didn’t matter that court forbid any contact with any child under the care of Mrs. Weaver. Maybe it didn’t matter that Mara had gotten sick before she could find a way out for Catra. Maybe it didn’t matter that Adora followed Mara  _ everywhere _ once she was adopted, so unused to not having her other half, and even at twelve years old snuck into her godmother’s bed every night because she couldn’t sleep in a bed alone and by herself. Maybe it didn’t matter that Adora struggled to make friends until Bow and Glimmer, or talked to herself when she was alone, or she hadn’t ever had a steady girlfriend, or how she thought of her old friend every night as she tried to sleep.

Those things didn’t matter, because anyway you could look at it, Adora’s love had still faded with time. “You need to let go, Adora.” Dr. Hope had said, but Adora didn’t understand how, so she did the next best thing. She just repressed the hell out of it. Over the years, Adora buried every memory deep within her subconscious and hid any evidence of her time with Mrs. Weaver. With every fiber of her being, she made herself forget her first love, and her first friend.

All that was left now of Catra now was an empty space, a void in her heart that would not heal, not with all the time in the world.

If it weren’t for the other girl’s tattoo, they may not have survived the rest of the ride. Adora was infatuated with the feline on her wrist the minute she laid eyes on it; it was perhaps the most gorgeous work of art she’d ever seen in her life and Frosta had dragged them to all those museums on their days off, so she should know. Catra’s desire to become a tattoo artist, as well as her unique ability to ink herself, should not have been such a surprise to Adora. It was a testament to who she was, who’d she become, and a testament to her strength. When they were young, Catra drew all the time- specifically on the deteriorating walls of the orphanage because she was always looking for ways to piss of their caretaker- but also on her own body. There was never a surplus of crayons or paper in their house, so she used the next best thing- steal pens from Mrs. Weaver’s office (or teachers or from the cashiers at the store or from the bank or from the mailman that one time) and draw on her own skin. Or Adora’s skin. Or Kyle’s face.

_ “Stop this, you wretched child!”  _ Mrs. Weaver would scream, pulling Catra into the bathroom to scrub the ink of her arms and legs. Adora knew the water was always too hot and Mrs. Weaver’s aggressive scrubbing turned Catra’s warm brown skin bright red, but for some reason Catra would be drawing on her arms again the next day in class. All this time Adora believed Catra just enjoyed the attention that came with getting in trouble, ever the glutton for punishment, but maybe mapping out her feelings on her own body was the only quiet way she could cope with her anxiety.

Selena the Cat was a long way from the messy portraits Catra drew of them behind their bunk bed when they were six years old, the night Adora made a promise she failed to keep.

“She’s amazing.” Adora breathed out as she slid down her bedroom door after Catra dropped her off, rubbing her dry tear stained skin. It was easier to think about Catra’s beautiful armor- that she’d given  _ herself-  _ and what other wonders lay on her skin than to think about their fight, the mess Adora had made, and the truth that Catra carried with her all this time. Her birth mom took her own life, her father walked out before she was born, and when Adora followed Mara out that door, Catra was thrown to the wolves. Five different foster homes before she turned 18.  _ Five  _ different homes. It was brutal, it was cruel, it was unfair. And indirectly, or maybe even directly, it was Adora’s fault.  “You deserved better, Catra, you  _ still  _ deserve better. Even if that’s not me. Please don’t give up on what you have, what you could become.  _ Please _ .”

Another restless night followed the second ride home. Adora stayed where she had descended cradling herself by her door, headphones in and her main playlist on shuffle, researching possible tattoo designs on her phone, then tattoo apprenticeships, and then she just gave in to the self destruction. The music was what finally made her snap, every song reminded her of Catra. Patiently her emotions waited their turn and it was time to feel this pain, even if was thirteen years too late. So Adora let herself feel the pain, the anger, the sadness, the grief… she let it take her as she sobbed and sobbed because she hadn’t cried herself out in like she thought she did in Catra’s back seat, until there was absolutely nothing left but the quiet music lulling her broken heart sleep.

_ “And we know it’s never simple, never easy, never a clean break, no one there to save me…”  _ the song crescendoed as Adora gave up wiping the tears off her face.

When Adora woke up on the floor the next morning, still in her clothes from the night before and lips tasting of salt, she decided to play it safe and take the bus for a few nights. Just until she could pull herself away from listening to the saddest music in her Spotify library.

An hour had now passed an Adora was  _ still  _ on hold with dumb face Gary, and her anxiety (that the terrible hold music was only making much worse) was slowly rising. Without thinking, she started chewing her thumb nail. Adora hadn’t bitten her nails in  _ years.  _ So much for shaking that bad habit. “C’mon Gary… c’mon Gary…” At this rate, it was going to take Adora another thirteen years to find Catra. “I’m not taking no for an answer! Or no answer for an answer- just come back stupid Uber support!”

Having only been drunk once in her entire life, her 21st birthday, Adora didn’t know much about she acted when she was wasted, but she had this terrible feeling she wasn’t exactly easy to handle. Glimmer had said she was a “bit of a pervert” after about four drinks and that sentiment worried Adora a  _ lot _ , for several reasons. 1) She hadn’t gotten  _ any  _ in a really long time and was borderline touch starved, 2) Adora knew she kind of had the hots for Catra, with her stupid sexy tattoos and soft, squeaky laugh, 3) there was no way she didn’t have more than four drinks if she was dealing with not being able to beat Chad’s face in.

And with very few memories to go off, it was safe for Adora to assume she’d done the absolute worse and take it  _ all  _ back right the fuck now. If  _ Gary _ ever came back.

“Your call is very important to us and your patience is appreciated…”

“AHHHHHHH!” Adora screamed at the sound of the automated voice. “Stupid Uber! Stupid Gary! Stupid dumb hold music! Why does everyone at this company have such! Bad! Taste-”

“Okay Miss Adora,” she heard the dial tone click and her heart almost exploded with reprieve and happiness as Gary started talking and she clamped her hand over her big mouth. “I was able to find one Catra Jauregui-”  _ that must be her mother’s last name,  _ “- age 24, license plate number 6TR-”

“Thank you Gary, this is all very helpful, but I just need her phone number.”

“Well I’m not permitted to release the personal information of our drivers, ma’am.” responded Gary, his tone dry.

Adora threw her head back, holding back a scream and instead taking a deep breath. “You were just about to tell me her license plate number Gary! Listen, I just- I just need my wallet and charger back.”

“I thought it was your keys.”

_ Fuck.  _ “Keys! Oh yeah, keys! That’s- that’s definitely what I meant.”

“Alrighty then.”

One frustrating hour and fifteen minute phone call later, Adora was on another one. Or the fourth one, because Catra had not picked up, and Adora was not leaving a voicemail. She was  _ not  _ backing down (and she may,  _ may _ have chickened out every time she heard Catra’s voicemail message start)  “Come on, come on, come on…” she was pacing the length of her room a lot faster now, “Pick up Catra, come on-”  _ click! _

“Who are you? Why are you calling me? How’d you get this number?” Catra’s voice suddenly exploded on the other end of the line and Adora almost dropped her phone in shock.

_ Okay, so I maybe pissed her off by calling her a few times. No biggie, I can bounce back from that. Right?  _ “Catra, Catra! It’s me, calm down! Adora-”

“What- Adora? How did you- Who the  _ hell  _ gave you my fucking phone number?”

“I called Uber and I asked for it.” explained Adora. Catra’s outburst of anger didn’t deter her in the slightest. At this point she was just happy to here her old friend’s voice.

“They  _ gave _ you my phone number just because you asked nicely?” Adora could practically hear her seething, “there is no way that’s legal, why the fuck-”

“Well I did lie and say I left my keys and wallet in you car, so… ta-dah....” Adora admitted, her voice quiet (What? That’s how Tina Fey did it on  _ The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt _ ). This was the moment of truth, no big deal. Taking a deep breath, Adora sat cross legged on her bed trying to form the words for her apology as she did so.

There was a soft mumble on the other line she couldn’t quite make out, then a bitter “Why are you calling Adora?”

“I need to,” wincing, Adora bit her lip, “I need to apologize. I know I got really drunk last night and I only got drunk for a really, really dumb reason because of my stupid coworkers were egging me on and it was my fault you had to deal with that because I know you took me home-” okay, now she was rambling and very quickly running out of breath.  _ Pull it back, Adora.  _ It was only just now occurring to her how she could of made good use of that last hour on hold: formulating a decent and well-worded apology. Adora spent her whole life planning for what was ahead, but with Catra all of her executive functioning went out the window. Catra made her impulsive. “-and I want to say thank you for doing that because I’m not easy to deal with when I’m wasted and I’m just really, really sorry.”

Adora’s last words hung in the air as they settled into an awkward and painful silence. Listening and waiting for Catra to speak, Adora started mentally kicking herself for what had to be the worst apology ever.  _ She’s gonna hate me because I can’t do  _ anything  _ right and that’s that! I ruined… whatever we had, again! _

And then Catra started laughing, a full on cackle, like she was some evil villainess and this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard in her life. The more Adora listened to her laugh, the less offended she was the Catra was completely making fun of her and the more she decided it was the best sound she’d ever heard, her hand coming to where warmth was radiating in her chest.

_ I don’t like it,  _ she thought, clawing at her skin. Just leave it to Catra to make her so self conscious. “Are you… are you laughing at me?”  

“Yeah I’m laughing, cause this is really fucking funny.” Catra wheezed.

Adora threw her hand up. “Why?”

“Because you stalked me like a creep just so you could apologize for getting shitfaced, you weirdo.” said Catra, after another straight minute of laughing.

“Okay,” Adora bit her lip, “yeah that was weird. But I felt bad!”

“Yeah, it had  _ nothing _ to do with keeping you image, Princess.”  _ It did not!  _ Adora tugged at her hair, feeling a certain sense of indignation at Catra insulting her and calling her this weird pet name at the same time. “How bad is your hangover?”

“ _ Everything  _ hurts.” Adora exhaled.

“Ha ha! Fucking serves you right for getting so drunk!” There was an edge to her words, but her tone was so playful Adora couldn’t help but smile.

“So how bad was I last night?”

Catra mused that over for a few seconds, then “You weren’t like, the worst drunk person I’ve had to take care. Why, you want the highlights?”

“Sure why not,” Adora shrugged, still playing with the end of her hair, “I don’t remember anything from last night.”

That wasn’t the  _ whole _ truth; Adora did have one clear memory that clued her in on who got her back home: Catra’s split eyes staring down at her as Adora looked up. In all, the memory was really fuzzy. But she wasn’t about to tell Catra that she remembered that, or anything at all. She wanted to know how it  _ really  _ played out, and given Catra’s “I don’t give a shit about your feelings” aura led Adora to trust her to tell the full truth.

“Looks like Princess can’t handle her liquor, awh how _cute.” Okay is she flirting or is she just being mean?_ Either way, Adora wasn’t so sure she wanted Catra to stop. “Well you fell about fourteen fucking times because you don’t know how to walk in heels-” Adora just rolled her eyes, “-and indented Marshmallow’s car, so thanks for that She Hulk. Then you acted like a toddler, climbed over the seat even though I could have gotten in a fuck ton of _trouble_ , and then you told me I smelled like cheese.”

“That’s… that’s it?” her mouth was gaping wide and guilt was flooding her veins, but Adora just wanted to be sure.

“You also threw up on my shoes.”

“Oh no…”

“But you’re roommate can tell you all about that.” finished Catra, just a hint of smugness in her voice. Adora shifted in her discomfort.  

“Which roommate- wait that’s not important! Look, I’m  _ really _ sorry about your shoes. I could buy you a new pair if you need me to-”

“Dude it’s  _ fine, _ ” Catra stopped her mid sentence, a good thing too; Adora was rearing up to ramble again, “I don’t need new shoes. God, I wished you stopped offering me stuff, it’s weird.”

“I can… I can stop, if you want me too.” Adora told her. She wasn’t sure where she was supposed to go from here, and she could feel herself deflating. Her apology was the only arrow in her quiver and she’d completely blown it. Why did she so easily crumble in Catra’s grasp, everytime without fail?  _ I could try… small talk?  _ Bringing her flaxen hair to her face, Adora let out an inaudible sigh.  _ Catra would see  _ right  _ through that and hang up before I could ask about the freaking weather.  _ God, why was rebuilding such a broken relationship so frustratingly difficult?  Between Catra’s attitude and Adora’s stubbornness, even just a simple conversation was like walking on broken glass.

“Hey listen,” started Catra and Adora perked up so quickly she almost snapped her spine.  _ Oh yeah, still hung over... _

“Yeah?”  _ Seriously Adora, you’re coming on way to strong! _ She could practically hear Bow screaming at her to step back. At this rate, Adora was going to scare Catra away even in her sober state.

“You actually did leave something… in my car.” her voice had gotten strangely quiet.

“Wait really?”   

“Yeah- wait you didn’t know? Oh  _ right, _ you were totally hammered.” her light sarcastic tone had Adora rolling her eyes again and biting back a smile. 

“Very funny Catra.”

“Oh it was fucking hysterical.” she shot back, like their banter was a game and she’d finally met a player worth her equal, “but seriously you actually left one of your notebooks in the front seat. Also why do you have a  _ million  _ notebooks?”

Panic was her first primal reaction.  “Uh… which- um which notebook? What did- do you know what it looks like?” Wait, how did Catra know how many notebooks she had? Adora looked across her room to where her purple Jansport lay sagging on her desk chair.  _ Please let it not be my She-Ra notes, please let it not be my She-Ra, God don’t screw me over for once and please let it  _ not  _ be my She-Ra notes-” _

“Duh I know what it looks like, dumby! Just because my eyes are two different colors doesn’t mean they don’t fucking work! It’s like grey and stuff and has a unicorn sticker. Seriously, Adora? A unicorn?” Adora didn’t hear a word she said after that.  _ Catra has my She-Ra notes, an unauthorized party has access to all of my work, CATRA HAS MY SHE-RA NOTES! _

“Did you… did you read it?” her voice was barely above a shaking whisper, every second Catra didn’t answer an torturous infinity. Catra had possession of what was quickly becoming her life’s work and Adora knew what position that put her in. The women who hated her was now holding her baby- well metaphorical baby- hostage. Anything Catra wanted to do to her was on the table.

“Uh… yeah. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” Adora did a double take looking at her phone at her tone. Was that… was that shame in her voice? Catra invaded her privacy, the privacy of someone she seemed intent of despising until the end of  _ time _ , and then she actually felt bad?

“Catra!” Adora said her name in a low growl.

“I was gonna give it back!” defended Catra, “And you were the drunk idiot who kept letting her backpack spill out in my car!”

_ That’s  _ how the notebook ended up in the car!  _ For the sake of She-Ra I am  _ never  _ drinking again.  _  “So you just  _ read  _ my work?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Catra asked, the sarcasm back with a bite.

“Uh,” Adora stuttered, “leave it alone! It wasn’t yours!”

“Oh please, Princess, this isn’t Weaver’s hellhole anymore you don’t have to guard your stuff because you think someone’s gonna steal your shit! And Jesus, who leaves their important work in a notebook? Ever heard of a laptop, Adora?”

Adora could feel her anger rising in her throat like fire. Part of her knew that letting Catra have it meant losing Catra. The other part of her was tired of Catra taking advantage of her kindness and vulnerability over and over and  _ over  _ again like she was a free punching bag for Catra’s repressed issues. Catra didn’t want Adora in her life? Fine! But Adora wanted her fucking notebook back. “Why do you think you’re entitled to  _ everything _ ? You could’ve just given it back! But no, you just had to look in it! You knew that was personal but what, it was a  _ reflex? _ ”

“ _ I’m _ the entitled one?” Catra’s laughter was full of bitterness. Adora’s grip on the phone tightened. “Take a good long look at yourself in the mirror, Adora because  _ I’m  _ not the one who got drunk of her ass because a coworker got under her perfect skin!”

“Oh stop deflecting, Catra! Answer the damn question!  _ Why _ did you read it?”

“ _ Because _ .”

“Because  _ why _ ?” demanded Adora.

“Because I wanted to, Adora!” Catra screamed, her voice guttural. “ _ I  _ wanted to see what the big deal was with She-Ra, fucking sue me, alright? I wanted to see if you were good enough to get published, okay? Cause I don’t have what it takes to go through with your stupid deal and didn’t want you to either! Okay?”

Adora didn’t answer, not at first. First she just let Catra’s words sink into her skin, not knowing if this was her first victory or her final defeat. Her response to Catra’s caustic vulnerability was just one single word. “And?”

“And what?” squeaked Catra.

“What did you think… of She-Ra?”

“Huh? What did I think?” Catra asked, her tone not failing for a second to insinuate what a stupid question Adora asked.

“Yeah, I want your opinion.” Adora answered, knowing exactly what she was doing. She’d just handed Catra a loaded gun and asked her to point it at her. “So… do I have what it takes?”

Adora hadn’t done a lot of things right in her life, not in her own opinion anyway. The sins she carried, the people she turned her back on, the stories she had not told, they haunted her at night and ate away at her fragile confidence. She-Ra could change that, or Adora hoped and prayed. She-Ra could change everything, she could  _ fix _ everything, she could right the wrongs that Adora could not.

Or so she believed until that first night in Catra’s car. That night Adora realized that she couldn’t hide behind She-Ra to fix what had happened between her and her friend. That she would have to do herself.

“Um… uh,” Catra paused and Adora held her breath, “I liked it?”

Sitting straight up, Adora gasped despite the pain, “Wait really?”

“I mean it’s little cliche and you have a few plot holes and it kinda reads like a spinoff of something from the 80’s” Adora couldn’t help but laugh. “But it’s a lot more interesting than most garbage people make these days. Hey, if I say something nice will it go straight your big dumb blonde head?”

“Um” Adora pursed her lips, trying not to smile like an idiot, “-sure?”

“You’re a pretty good writer.”

Oh, like that  _ wasn’t  _ gonna go to her head.

“You’re a pretty good artist,” Adora said without thinking. Why was her skin so hot? What was Catra doing to make her like this?  _ Pull it back, you idiot!  _ Bow’s voice echoed in her brain. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s not like publishers agree or think I have any skill.”

Catra just scoffed. “Yeah, well they’re idiots. But like, Adora you don’t have a love interest or any of that shit. I’m no expert, but don’t all young adult novels like revolve on some dumb romance?”

“I know I don’t have a love interest and yes I know that I need one.”  _ Okay so she really  _ did  _ read the entire notebook. Great.  _ “My advisor said that I should just come up with some pretty boy with like a sword of his own or something.”

“Sword of his own?” snickered Catra.

Adora’s jaw dropped. “Catra! That’s  _ not  _ what I meant-”

“Yeah, yeah whatever. How dare I do that to She-Ra, blah blah blah.” she trailed off.

_ No,  _ Adora thought, _ how dare you set up a character who is basically  _ me  _ with a man?! _

“But like, what do you want?” Catra was asking.

“Huh?”

“For She-Ra, what do you want to do? Who cares what those moronic publishers want. It’s your fucking story. I say do whatever the hell you want. So what do you want Adora?” she said again and Adora was suddenly suspended in her own emotions. For some reason when Catra asked her that, Adora instinctively thought of split eyes, sharp, almost inhumane canines, black wavy curls, the smell of cinnamon and a cat with a moon on her neck, sitting peacefully on warm brown skin.  _ I want…  _ She swallowed, furrowing her brow before shaking her head like a dog shaking off water.  _ Don’t finish that thought,  _ please _ don’t finish that thought. It’s not fair to her. _

“I want my notebook back.” Adora hoped her voice wasn’t shaking.

“Ugh, you can’t wait like three fucking days?” the other girl whined.

Given her monstrous writer’s block, Adora probably could have gone another few days without the notebook. Most of it was on her computer. The only problem lay in the fact _who_ had the notebook; Adora would be lying if she said she didn’t completely trust Catra not to tamper with her work or write mean notes in the margin. Plus, they were on speaking terms right now so it was best to make the exchange before shit hit the fan again. Whatever they had, whatever this was… it wasn’t stable. Delicate, volatile maybe. But not stable, not yet.

“Nope.”

Catra moaned in a dramatic fashion, and Adora found herself giggling. That was her Catra; not the one who wore a leather jacket for armor and flashed her teeth because she was predator but never prey, but the one who defined stubborn love and undying loyalty, the one who was endlessly playful and warm, the one that would protect you until to her dying breath. That was the Catra Adora had loved.

“Fine! You win dumby, I’ll be there in thirty minutes. You better be out on your fancy porch or I’m driving away  _ with  _ your stupid notebook _ ,  _ Adora!”

“Wait  _ what- _ ”  

But her only answer was a dropped phone call.

_ Oh shit. _

_

“That was forty five minutes, by the way, not thirty.” Adora said as she opened the door to Catra’s Toyota. The other girl just scoffed and rolled her eyes as Adora took her seat in the back.

“I got distracted, sue me.” shrugged Catra. “And I had to take a shower I still smelled like vomit.”

When Catra hung up so abruptly, it took a few minutes for Adora to process what had even happened. Catra was coming now? Just to give her notebook back. Yeah, that what Adora wanted but she hadn’t expected Catra to give in without a bigger fight. “I cannot figure her out!” Adora announced to her empty room before downing a few more Tylenol and another bottle of water. Then, as carefully as she could manage with her aching body, she hobbled down the stairs, through her living room, and out her door to wait on the steps. As she waited, scrolling through her instagram feed got boring fast, so she sent a quick text to her, Bow, and Glimmer’s group chat.

_ Adora,  _ 1:35 pm

hey. i’m up. super sorry about last night

She hoped the ten sad face emojis and a few sparkling hearts portrayed just how guilty she felt about the whole thing. Bow, ever the most functional of three, was quick in his reply.

_ Bow (the best boy),  _ 1:35 pm

no biggie!!!! how are you feeling? did you eat?

_ Adora,  _ 1:36 pm

i’m okay :)  yeah i ate.

Those were both lies. Her nose had begun throbbing again along with her head and the dull pain her stomach turned even Glimmer’s food inedible. She went back and forth with Bow for a while, talking about how Mermista had dropped by trying to figure out how to one up her not-boyfriend on their not-date and how dysfunctional that was (in Bow’s opinion) and how in entertaining it was to watch unfold (in Adora’s opinion, and everyone else’s). By the time his lunch break was over and he had to go, it had been 39 minutes. Adora let out a long sigh.  _ She’s not coming. She thrives on unpredictability and I’m just not worth it I guess. _

But then about four minutes later she pulled up in Marshmallow’s car.

“Again,” Adora winced as Catra turned the ignition, “sorry about puking on you. And for everything else”

“S’fine.” another nonchalant shrug.

“So, where are we going?” Adora asked as Catra pulled away from the curb.

“Around the block, Princess. It’s easier to do this when I have something to focus on that’s not you.” _Okay, that stings._ Adora tried to hide the hurt in her face by turning to the window, only to be met with her tired reflection. “You can come up here, I know you want to.”

Their eyes met in the rearview mirror for an infinite moment, and Adora swallowed. She had no reason to be nervous, no reason to be apprehensive and reluctant as she was. So why were her hands shaking?

_ Stop that,  _ she told herself as she moved from the back to the front. “Won’t this get you in trouble?”

“Not if I’m not charging you, it won’t. Besides, I’m tired of feeling like your goddamn chauffeur.” there was a bite to her words and it stung, a  _ lot _ . Adora rubbed her arm as the came to stop sign. “Here’s your stupid notebook by the way.” Catra said out of the blue, and before Adora knew what was happening, her notebook was colliding with her collarbone.

“OW! Damn it- Catra!”

“Sorry.” she mumbled and pulled forward.

_ Why is she acting like this? Because I made her come here?  _ She’s  _ the one who decided to come right now, I didn’t make her. Now she won’t even make eye contact with me.  _ Hugging her notebook to her chest, Adora looked straight out the windshield and asked in a whisper, “Are you mad at me or something? About last night?”

“For the last time, Adora I’m not mad about last night, I’m mad cause-” Catra stopped herself, her nostrils flaring and shook her head.

“You were fine on the phone! Catra, I’m not a mind reader,” the other girl seemed to sink in her seat, one of her incisors catching her lip, “so just tell me. I can handle if your mad at me.”

Catra didn’t answer. She just kept driving. Running a hand through her hair (she never did put it up or put on actual clothes), Adora sighed and settled into her seat. This was going to be an awkward ride. If Catra wanted to act closed off and volatile, then Adora wouldn’t pry. She was way to hungover anyway.

“Why didn’t you put me in your story?” asked Catra, her voice quiet and hoarse, after a painstaking ten minutes of silence.

Adora looked from the window to her. “Huh?”

“You put everyone in your book, Rainbow and Glitter and all the rest of your friends! Then you put Mrs. Weaver  _ and  _ Hordak in it. I didn’t even know you knew  _ anything _ about Hordak other than shit Weaver was always talking about him, but he’s like the big bad guy? Fuck, even Lonnie and Rogelio and  _ Kyle  _ made it _?  _ Seriously, Adora?  _ Kyle?” _

“I…” that was  _ not  _ where Adora expected this conversation to go. Of all of her and Catra’s emotional baggage combined, there was plenty for Catra to be angry about, regardless of whether or not it was any of Adora’s fault. But her story? “I didn’t think it was right.”

Catra turned to look at her, her brows furrowed and teeth bared, throwing up a gloved hand. “What the  _ hell  _ does that mean?”

“Well it’s not like I knew where you were so I could ask your permission!” huffed Adora, hugging the notebook tighter.

Early in the process, Adora decided against using Catra or anything resembling her namesake. Mrs. Weaver and Hordak were difficult to even draft or brainstorm about and Adora became plagued by nightmares as the concept of The Horde started coming alive in her mind, and she didn’t want the good memories of her friend clashing with the raw and painful memories of her abuse. At first, Adora played with idea of Catra growing up with her in the Horde but dying at the hands of Shadow Weaver, her death acting as catalyst to encourage her own character to go back for the sword of protection in the Whispering Woods and offer herself as a warrior for the Rebellion, to avenge Catra. But that idea didn’t even make it to the paper. It didn’t feel right and it wasn’t the story she wanted to tell. As for any other ideas, they didn’t have much substance; all Adora had of Catra was the memory of when they were children, so inserting her likeness as an young adult fighting for the Rebellion was a challenge bordering on impossible.

“Everyone I put in the story, I asked for their permission. It’s not cause you’re not important to me. My friends got to choose what their weaknesses and strengths were, and we weren’t, you know, doing this whole weird Uber thing at the time. And with Mrs. Weaver and Hordak, they hurt me, they hurt my family,  _ you _ didn’t…” Blue eyes caught split ones. The car was stopped and Catra’s shoulders had relaxed. “I know it’s completely backwards but I didn’t need to ask for permission because-”

“Because they’re the bad guys, right?” Catra looked down at her sharpened nails.

“Well Lonnie and Rogelio and Kyle aren’t going to be bad guys  _ forever _ . They were kidnapped so they deserve a chance too.” explained Adora.

“Mhmm.” the other girl nodded. “You still don’t have an antagonist, right? An equal to She-Ra, whatever the fuck that means?”

“Uh, no. I’m actually really stuck there.” Adora admitted, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.

Catra’s voice quiet when she spoke next. “What about me?”

_ What? _

“You?” Adora stuttered, completely taken aback, “You want to be She-Ra’s enemy?”

“Yeah why not?” she shrugged, “You have my permission, Princess. Make _ me _ the bad guy.” The twinkle in her eyes was borderline evil as she looked at Adora, her arm extended over the seat, and for a second, Adora could picture it.

“Catra, are you sure?” Adora grabbed her hand without thinking, “Why don’t you want to be good?”  

“You don’t need anymore “good people” in your story, Adora! You need someone who kicks ass, is what you need. So do it, you coward!” yelled Catra, a wild, wicked smile on her pretty face.

Adora let go of her hand and leaned back in her own seat. “If you’re sure this is what you want...you’d be okay with whatever I wrote about you?”

“Yep.” Catra nodded.

“Okay then,” Adora could feel her heart racing as she smiled widely, “welcome to She-Ra, Catra.”

Turning back to the road, the corner of her mouth still upturned, Catra shook her head. “God you sound so lame, I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”

“This mean you’re going to go through with our deal?”

“Maybe.” she parked the car and stuck a nail between Adora’s forehead, pushing her back.  _ Uh, what’s she doing? _ They were back at her place, and Adora felt a twinge of disappointment. “Bye Adora. Get out.”

“What?”

“I gotta go to work, you moron. Enjoy the rest of your hangover.”

Adora’s shoulders fell as the pain once again registered in her head and stomach. “Ugh thanks for the reminder. At least stuff is coming back to me. Hey maybe, in a couple of hours I’ll actually remember how I hurt my nose.”

“Uhh,” Catra’s eyes went wide, “I did that.”

“What? Catra!” her hand flew to her nose.

“You were being drunk and disorderly!” she defended herself, sinking into her seat like a pouting child. “You kept trying to touch my fucking hair.”

_ Yeah because it’s really, really pretty.  _ Adora didn’t blame her drunk self for that for one second. Catra’s curls just looked so soft and almost inviting. Her hair was everything Adora’s wasn’t. Voluminous, defined, beautiful. Adora wondered what it would be like just run her hand through her curls, just once. She’d be murdered brutally at Catra’s hand, but at least she could die knowing. How was Adora just now noticing that Catra had thrown her curls up into a messy ponytail? It was kind of sexy but also soft, in a way. For someone intent on being off limits and hellishly intimidating, the ponytail look made her look just a tiny bit more approachable and warm.

“Hello? Adora? Oh God, you don’t like have brain damage just because I decked you with my elbow?”   __

Realization hit Adora like a slap to her bruised face and broke her longing stare. Right, they had lives. Separate lives. Catra had to drive and Adora had to go the bakery and maybe,  _ maybe  _ fate would bring them back together. “No it’s fine. Uh, will I see you later?” she asked, her words tentative as she stepped out the car, her bare feet meeting cold concrete.

“Maybe if you promise not to stalk me.” Catra said. And then she  _ winked,  _ and Adora’s heart began to race. Only before Adora could yell at her for  _ that  _ move, because how dare she be so stupidly sexy and still so freaking mean at the same time, how dare Adora let herself fall just like that, Catra was reaching over to close the door and Adora was watching her drive away.

Again.

“Okay,” she breathed out and took a seat on the steps before opening her notebook, “she wants to be my main antagonist, I can do that- Oh my God…”

It seemed Catra had other ideas for She-Ra besides making herself Adora’s enemy, because when Adora opened the book several pieces of paper fell out and floated to the ground. They were drawings. Drawings she had done.

With as much reverence as possible, Adora picked up each drawing and brought them close. “These are… incredible! What does she mean, she doesn’t have what it takes?”  

The Horde Logo, that Adora had doodled one afternoon absentmindedly, trying to flush out the details of the First Ones’ connection to Etheria and Eternia, in bright bold red lines that stuck her from beyond the page.

_ “u fking suck at drawing princess”  _ was written beneath, right next to Catra’s messy signature.

The next was of the Sword of Protection hidden in the Whispering Woods, glowing in silent anticipation as it waited for its owner to claim it. Adora gasped as her fingers traced the edge of the sword, charcoal dusting her fingers. This was from an  _ actual _ scene Adora had written in the notebook. Catra really had read it.

And the last one, the last one had to be her favorite. Catra had drawn She-Ra brandishing the sword, her golden hair flowing around her.  _ Every  _ detail was how Adora had imagined, from the ruby in the tiara, to the star like emblem on her arm, to her broad muscles. There was even a gleam in her teeth and a twinkle in her perfect blue eyes.  

Written underneath, right by Catra’s signature, was the phrase Adora used to call on She-Ra.  _ “FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL!”  _ and then in tiny scrawled letters  _ “really, adora?” _

Adora felt tears pricking at her eyes the longer she stared at Catra’s stunning drawing. For  _ so  _ long, She-Ra was an untouchable dream. One day it was just a fun universe for her friends to enjoy and pretend to be who they truly were- the people the world wouldn’t allow them to be- at least in fiction. The next day it was a way to apply herself and not succumb to the failure she was doomed to be. Every other day it was just another maladaptive daydream in which Adora conquered her past and succeeded in her future. But what Catra had given her, what she was holding in her hands, that made it real.

She wasn’t aware of how much time had passed as she stared at the drawings. Later Adora could wonder why Catra had done this for and what ulterior motive she possessed for letting Adora even see them, but for now, she was only torn away from the pieces when her phone buzzed and she realized it was almost three o’clock. Glimmer had messaged the group chat and must’ve been on break.

_ BAE (glimmer)  _ 2:59 pm

    Adora!!!! how are you feeling??!!?! we miss you!!!

_ Adora,  _ 3:00 pm

__ I’m okay :) I miss you guys too. how’s the bakery?

_ BAE (glimmer)  _ 3:01 pm

:( slow. bow is bored. He’s making paper cranes out of napkins again. Perfuma said she might come in after she closes

_ Adora,  _ 3:01 pm

send pics bow. 

_ Adora,  _ 3:02 pm

hey is it okay if I just stay home today? i’m still feeling pretty sick

_ Bow _   _(the best boy)_ _ ,  _ 3:03 pm multimedia message attached

OF COURSE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF GIRL

his name is gerald and this his hubby jerry

Adora snickered at his selfie with the family paper crane napkin he’d assorted by a tray of cupcakes. Her favorite part was Glimmer glaring at him in the background as she ate her lunch, ranch dressing on her face because she couldn’t use a napkin.

_ BAE (glimmer)  _ 3:03 pm

love you adora! see you tonight!

_ Adora  _ 3:04 pm

love you guys too. more than anything :)

With that, she locked her phone and gathered up her drawings and notebook. Adora knew as she made her way to her room and her desk that she was finally ready to take on her writer's block. No longer was she going to let it rule her, not when some many believed in her and in She-Ra. So, with her laptop ready with a blank word document, Catra’s drawings leaning on her wall to cheer her on, and her favorite pens surrounding her, Adora opened her notebook to the page titled  _ “Main Antagonist.” _

Under it Adora wrote,  _ “Catra (half cat/half human species) equal to She-Ra as she is an equal to Adora. Grew up with Adora in the Horde but separated when Adora finds the Sword of Protection.”  _ It turned out the idea of being raised together was the route Adora was going to take after all, except this time Catra was not going to die fighting, she was going to rise through the ranks and ultimately, to her own salvation.

_ “Rises to become Hordak’s second in command, vanquishes Shadow Weaver, daughter of Queen Selena and heir to the throne of the Magicats." _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: i have no idea what im doing
> 
> that was a lot of emotional word vomit. when I was writing the exposition (which there is a lot of in this chapter) I was like (@ my self) "Can you not be a dramatic bitch for two seconds?!?" and apparently the answer is no, I can't
> 
> but the next chapter is in the works!   
> thank you to everyone on tumblr who's been messaging me and helping me. and thanks once again to my beta, anna. 
> 
> comments/validation is always appreciated and always loved!
> 
> you know where to find me: [princessofgayskull](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com)


	5. in my head I do everything right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And in all her confusion, and in all the hurt and all the healing, Adora wasn’t sure how to pop “Hey, my best friend from the abusive orphanage I grew up in and that I haven’t seen in thirteen years because I basically abandoned her is now my Uber driver.” on the two most important people in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello lovelies!!!! We're back at in once again!
> 
> first off, I apologize for the wait. I'm not super great at being able to know when chapters will be up and i want to thank you (and hug you) for your patience and support for this story. I never expected to get this far and it really is because you are all so amazing and wonderful and kind. I've been writing fic for about three years and I can say I'm very used to being asked and demanded for updates, but it's been the exact opposite with this fic. you gave me permission to take my time and that means everything to me. I hit, well I wouldn't call it writers block, it was more of a slump and then classes started. 
> 
> you guys love the story so much it blows me away. and the best moments when I'm writing are that I realize I love the story too.
> 
> also, a total fic dream came true for me. three amazingly talented and brilliant artists created art for the story and I encourage you all to follow these artists and support them! They all do some pretty amazing work.  
> so once again, thank you a million to [spicybutch](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/181787120125/catra-caught-a-glimpse-of-her-own-self-in-the)  
> [cloudwithoutasilverlining](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/181771089895/cloudwithoutsilverlining-i-wanted-to-do-a)  
> [spicybon](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/181698629190/spicybon-drew-smth-for-this-fic-because-wow)  
>  
> 
>  
> 
> thank you all so much for bringing this story of mine to life. 
> 
> oh and the chapter ended up being 16k+ so I split it into two parts! so make sure to catch the next chapter!

_ Though the power quakes within her, it’s unstable, an almost violent electricity pulsing through the stone and surging through her veins. Blinding is the light of her transformation and the feeling of her atoms separating, dancing through space and time only to rearrange  and become a universe within her as She-Ra, is indescribable. Adora stands before the army of Horde Soldiers, the soldiers she once called her family, but she is something else this time. Ugh, wait stop, Adora. This isn’t gonna work, and you’re being  _ way  _ too dramatic-Oh! What if Glimmer’s the first person to see Adora transform. I mean, afterall she gave Adora the sword back as a sign she trusted her, so wouldn’t it be more meaningful if Glimmer saw her first? She could just do the whole honor of grayskull spiel right as Glimmer gives her back the sword, yeah I like that better. Okay, that way the Horde doesn’t know who She-Ra really is… that’s it! The Horde doesn’t know with the exception of Catra, so she can go back and use that against Shadow Weaver. Also it hurts way more. Okay so, what would that look like? Catra finding out that Adora is She-Ra? You know what, I’m gonna work on that instead. _

_ “Retreat!” the Horde officers yell at the top of their lungs. Adora can feel the power of She-Ra leaving her, the sword of protection trembling in her shaking hands. She knows she can’t hold onto this fleeting form much longer.  Glimmer and Bow’s voices echo through the smoke as the tanks and their soldiers fall behind, assuming a weak formation in their defeat. Adora lets go. An otherworldly force, She-Ra is not hers to control and is leaving her anyway. As she falls to the ground, her knees landing in the dirt, she looks out into the war torn landscape and all the air leaves her lungs. She-Ra did this? No, Adora did. And there, as the smoke parts, is the pained gaze of one blue eye and one gold. Betrayal written on her face, Catra backs away from Adora. And it shatters Adora’s heart. _

_ “Catra!” she calls out. There’s no response. She’s gone- _

“So I know I said I wanted five of the snickerdoodle blondies, three of the chocolate muffins, and four of the macadamia nut cookies, but the macadamia’s have nuts in them right?” Adora blinked, ripped from her daydream full force and thrown back to dull droning voice of the customer she was serving at the current moment.  _ Oh,  _ she reminded herself as she looked to the man standing on the other side of the class case, the one Adora had been with for so long that she allowed herself to slip into the comforting world of her novel,  _ I’m at work. Right. _

_ Damn it, things were just getting good!  _ Adora did her best to keep a straight face despite her disappointment. Customers had to buy into the whole polite server facade or they’d have an indignant meltdown, and Adora didn’t want to deal with that. Well, she never did mind going toe to toe with an asshole of a customer (it was just,  _ so  _ lucrative), but it was bad for business, and given that this was her best friend’s business and lifelong dream, she knew she had to leave it alone and put on her most interested expression. For Glimmer’s sake. Glimmer was way worth it anyway.

Straightening out and placing the white paper box she’d been filling with his ever changing order, Adora took a deep breath and began to explain one more time, just like she had before he began to stare at the pastries with dead, glassy eyes and Adora had pressed play on her maladaptive daydream. “Yes sir. They are macadamia  _ nut  _ cookies Cookies, so they do have nuts in them.” The customer’s eyebrows furrowed as he processed this supposedly new information, while meanwhile Adora shot a dirty look at Bow and Perfuma, currently both turning red trying not to giggle at Adora’s use of the word nut.  _ It’s  _ not  _ that funny you guys,  _ she crossed her arms as she stared them down, but the longer she stared, the less discreetly they tried to hide their laughter.  _ Ugh, you two are definitely going to get beat up by Horde Soliders. At some point. I just gotta work that in. _ Next to them at the table, Mermista just rolled her eyes and continued staring at her phone.

“Well, I’mma uh, I’m allergic to nuts, and I think a bunch of people back at the office are too, so um, no macadamias.”

_ Ooh, I should give Kyle a  _ bunch  _ of allergies! That would fit, wasn’t he allergic to everything? That would piss Lonnie off and it would get on Shadow Weaver’s nerves.  _ “Alright, no Macadamias-” Adora grabbed one of the silver tongs and began moving the cookies back from the box to their original home in the case, when the man began to wave his arms like a crazed air traffic controller. Adora stopped dead in her tracks. “Uhh-”

“Wait, wait don’t put em back!” he practically screamed at her, his spit flying everywhere on the glass display. Shuddering ever so slightly, Adora thanked the the glass for taking the hit for her and pushed any thought of cleaning the glass later out of her mind. “Stacy in HR really likes em, so let’s go ahead and keep them. But I uh, don’t want ‘em touching the other cookies and stuff.”

“Um, if you want, I can put the nut products in a separate box so they don’t contaminate the other products.” explained Adora. This was like the fourteenth thing she had to clarify since they’d begun this sluggish process. No wonder she went back to planning She-Ra. Annoying customers didn’t phase Adora, not anymore, since that was just the norm at Glimmer’s bakery, or anywhere where the consumer had more rights than the employee- so basically everywhere. Adora had worked enough customer service jobs to know that there was a certain, and rather irritating, Murphy’s Law to people like her customer Dave. (She hoped that was his name; it was the name he’d given for the order but every once in awhile they gave the wrong name and lectured Adora for saying the name that was given to her) Either they were in a hellish hurry and everything Adora did including breathing was wrong as well as infringement on their basic human rights, or they had all the time in the world to misinterpret basic information and to request she spell simple things out for them  _ just _ as her shift was ending.

Her current customer squinted his tiny beady eyes before giving a slow, hesitant nod, like he didn’t trust Adora not to make a mistake. Adora just waited for his response, clicking her tongs to the beat of the song playing over the bakery’s speakers. She thought it might be Dua Lipa. Bow had been on a pop kick recently and this week it was his turn to pick a playlist for the bakery, therefore they’d been listening to the likes of Ariana Grande and Carly Rae Jepsen nonstop, much to Glimmer’s Fall Out Boy fueled chagrin. Adora didn’t mind as much though, it gave her chance to listen for lyrics that matched her characters. She was almost having fun. “That uh, sounds good. Uh, do all your products have nuts and stuff in ‘em?”

“No sir,” she shook her head, her pony tail swaying behind her as she started moving the macadamias into a separate, smaller box of their own. “Any of our products that contain allergens are listed on the card by them.” Adora pointed a gloved finger to the place card in front of the Macadamia cookies, smiling as she thought of how Bow spent the nights before the grand opening pouring over all of Glimmer’s recipes to create a design for the cards for each pastry that were “informative, detailed, and just a tad sexy.” In the midst of her memory, Adora forgave her friend for spending the entire shift she was  _ covering _ for him giggling at her choice of words and dragging the strict pacifist Perfuma into his chaotic meme tyranny.

_ I’ll just get them back later,  _ Adora told herself,  _ they are  _ so  _ going down. _

“Oh. Do you think I could uh-” Dave squinted his eyes once again and Adora narrowed hers, thinking for a split second that he kind of resembled a beaver. (In her defense, writing had wired her brain to scan even the real world for as many metaphors as possible, and writing  _ fantasy _ with a variety of half human- half animal species had not in any way helped this. Also, work was  _ boring _ .) The fact that he had bucked teeth as well as a buttonish and blemished nose, with nose hairs that complimented the ones in his ears, just tied it all together.  _ Beaver Dave.  _ Adora wrinkled her nose in an effort not to giggle “-maybe get a sample of the macadamias?

“You just- you just said you were allergic.” Adora stuttered, her mouth slightly agape.  _ C’mon Beaver Dave think things through! _ Over at their table, Perfuma and Bow had dissolved into full on giggling and Adora had to squash any impulse to chuck macadamia cookies at them.

Adora managed to ring him up four choices of pastries later, two of which were reversed and one that modified, and three calm explanations of how their chip reader worked (Dave gave up and just demanded she just swipe the card) later. A sense of pride washed over her as she watched Beaver Dave take his four white boxes of pastries and waddle out the door, and she turned to clock out, thirty six minutes past the end of her shift.

“Wow Adora, I’m kinda impressed.” Glimmer walked up behind her from the kitchen as Adora took her signature lilac apron off. Humming along to the song over the speakers- she didn’t know the name, but she was planning on asking Bow because it was  _ such  _ a Catra song- Adora grabbed the windex from under the first aid kit and gave her friend a casual shrug.

“Why, I’m just cleaning the glass.” Adora glanced down at the cleaner in her hand.

A look of confusion came over Glimmer’s face before she shook her head. “Not about  _ that _ , I mean about the customer. He was uhhhh,” Glimmer winced for effect, crossing her arms over her signature Adventure Time t-shirt.

“I don’t think he was  _ that  _ bad.” Adora commented.

“Um, no Adora he was kind of a nightmare.” said Glimmer, following her to the glass case full of beaver spit she had to clean off. “I mean, who doesn’t know that macadamia cookies have nuts in them? The last time a customer asked that, you know a couple days ago, you almost blew up.” It was Adora’s turn to wince. Glimmer was sugar coating her catastrophic reaction to customer’s question a few days prior; just like Dave they had asked a million questions with seemingly obvious answers- for example, do sugar free items have sugar in them- and when they asked her with a face full of innocence if “macadamia nut cookies contain nuts” Adora snapped the pair of tongs she’d been holding with nothing but her bare strength.  

“ _ And  _ he came right in as you were supposed to clock out.” Glimmer continued but again, Adora waved her off. Her focus was on putting the Windex back so she could go find her notebook and write down the scene she’d been painting her mind before Beaver Dave  _ needed  _ something before all of her mental work was gone.

“That’s like, the thing that customers do that you hate the most,” Bow pointed out as he closed his laptop. So much for spending the shift applying to grad school. Next to him Perfuma, who was supposed to be eating her lunch, nodded in silent agreement. “And you hate  _ everything  _ the customers do.”

Adora twirled on her heel and put her hands on her hips. “I don’t- I don’t hate  _ everything  _ they do.” She could stand by that statement. Well, mostly. Customers had a tendency to be ditzy as well as uniformed and there were plenty of occasions were they were straight up rude, consequently reinforcing Adora’s plans to never work another customer service job after this  _ again, _ but the customers who were kind and patient or genuinely interested in how her day had been, they were the people Adora looked forward to seeing the most. Her favorites were little kids, accompanied by tired moms and babies with the chubbiest cheeks, jumping up and down as they asked Adora for a sample, trying to remember in their hyperness to use their manners. It was nice to know that as she interacted with the kids, listening to them gush about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Peppa Pig, or played Hide-and-Seek with the babies, she was giving their exhausted mom a needed chance to breathe. Adora always couldn’t help but wonder if that kind of exhausted look of happiness on their faces was even in her future. “Besides, you guys were laughing  _ every _ time I said nut-” without any hesitation, all of them proceeded to snicker like they were twelve and this was Spin the Bottle at a birthday party, “-were a  _ lot _ more annoying than Beaver Dave was.”

Mermista looked up from her phone (and that was a feat all on its own) and raised a judgemental eyebrow. “Beaver Dave?”

“He looked like a beaver.” Adora explained in a quiet and hurried voice. Glimmer and Bow both shot her a unique perplexed look of their own before glancing at each other. At the other end of the table, Mermista gave a dry laugh before going back to her phone.

“I’m sorry we were bothering you Adora,” started Perfuma, a gentle look on her bright face.  _ How is her skin so perfect. _ “It’s just, Bow has been teaching me internet memes and twitter language. I’m sorry if we distracted you.”

“It’s okay, Perfect skin- I mean Perfuma,” Adora coughed to cover up her slip, “Besides I know it was just  _ Bow _ enabling you. It’s not like him to be such a bad influence.”

“Hey, you were the one that kept saying the word nut over and over.” Bow intoned, winking at her with those baby brown eyes of his.

Adora let out an exasperated sigh. “That’s what the cookies are called Bow! How is it my fault Beaver Dave had a million questions about it?”

“It’s okay Adora, we still  _ stan _ you.” Perfuma’s chestnut eyes lit up for a split second, before she whirled around to their friend across the table to ask in a frantic whisper, “Did I say that right?”

Arms up in a weak shrug, Bow nodded “More or less.”

“Oh yay!” Perfuma clapped her hands together.

“You might finally be getting the hang of this.” Bow remarked. Adora snorted. His voice and entertained expression just radiated “Old Wise Mentor Proud of their Young Pupil.” For an infinitesimal second, Adora was almost reminded of Razz, and her good mood glitched, like static interrupting a radio signal. The pangs of grief she had not quite processed invaded her heart, and her eyes fell to the alternating coral and baby blue tile.

It was moments like these that Adora thought she might be split into three people; the Adora living the past, the Adora living in the present, and the Adora living in the future. The grief and trauma that never ended trapped her in the past, her friends- this family she’d found herself with- grounded her the present, and the fantasies she imbued in her writing pulled her toward the future. Shoved back into one body, the three Adora’s did not get along, fighting over what moment she got to be in. Razz’s words echoed in her mind _“You’re a smart girl”,_ her face so like Bow’s in Adora’s memory, and past Adora won that moment.

Her friends, however, were putting up a good fight.

“Is that why you keep sending those stupid ‘the girl reading this’ memes in the group chat?” In the present, Mermista was narrowing her eyes at Perfuma.

“It’s educational! Perfuma needs to learn this stuff! I mean, how else is she going to keep up with our conversations if she’s always going on social media cleanses?” Bow reiterated, looking from Mermista to Glimmer to Adora and then back to Mermista, as Perfuma let out a nervous laugh and played with the ends of her long blonde hair.

“You guys are  _ spamming _ the group chat. Do you think it’s possible to, like I dunno, educate her and not spam me at the same time?” asked Mermista, as if Sea Hawk wasn’t drowning her inbox her with lyrics to new sea shanties as they spoke, despite his not girlfriend’s insistence they weren’t, and would never ever, making a comeback after five hundred years in the grave.

“Bow says it’s good practice, but I can stop if you want.” Perfuma offered.

“I mean,” Adora said with as shrug and the least amusement as she could muster. No longer was she dissociating, and she could breathe just a little easier. Being with them, being in the moment, helped ground her. “you could just keep practicing by making fun of me at work.” At this, Perfuma blushed a deep red and for a second Adora wondered if she had taken it a step too far, Glimmer and Mermista giggling. But Bow, ever the revival of chivalry, was not going to stand by as Perfuma made another attempt to bury herself behind her light golden locks.

“I think she’s doing great!” he announced with gusto that echoed of the bakery’s tile floor. “She can recite vines even the most experienced Gen Z can’t name. I did after all, quiz her for hours, so I should know.”

“Yeah we were there when you quizzed her. It was like two days ago and it was  _ super  _ annoying.” Mermista rolled her eyes and threw her feet up on the table, sinking into her blue hair and her seat almost simultaneously.

Glancing at Glimmer, Adora caught that familiar gleam of insecurity in her bright eyes, and before Adora could do anything, her best friend was leaning on the table with a big smile on her face. “Yeah, but you sent those vine compilations  _ to  _ the group chat, so now I know them all too! Pretty impressive right?”

“But I thought you hated Vines?” the corners of Bow’s mouth perked up as he turned in his seat.

“No I hate TikTok,” Glimmer corrected, waving him off. “Vines are fine, I love Vines. Vines are  _ great. _ ”

“Everyone stop saying the word Vine!” whined Mermista.

“Damn Mermista, you’re crankier than usual.” Bow clicked his tongue.

“Yeah,” Glimmer took the seat across from Mermista, “you’re reaching  _ Adora  _ levels of cranky.”

“And that’s saying something, cause Adora’s been a really downer lately,” added Bow as Adora just scoffed and put her hand on her hip. “You’re not like fighting with Sea Hawk again?”

“What did he set on fire this time?” Perfuma asked, reaching out to take Mermista’s hand but she just swatted the other girl away.

“Dude it’s not Sea Hawk, it’s my stupid dad. He wants me to come back to Sealineas for awhile and I feel like he’s gonna like, try and lecture me out of pro bono work. He’s _ not  _ to happy about that.” The rest of them nodded at Mermista’s explanation and Adora couldn’t help but wince. At eighteen, Mermista had come to Bright Moon University, and stayed to study law after earning her bachelor’s degree. Her desire to fight for governmental regulations that would protect the environment clashed with her father’s status as a top CEO in Sealineas, but Mermista was as stubborn as the sea. Adora felt for her friend, but she  wasn’t too worried; she knew that when this argument was over, Mermista would be victorious, because like the ocean, Mermista thrived within the storm. And at least Mermista had a family to fight with.

“I think it will all be okay,” Perfuma was saying. “I’ve had this feeling that everything is about to work out, and that the Universe is aligning in our favor. We’ve had a couple of rough years, but I trust this instinct.”

Bow chuckled, putting his hands behind his head. “I admire your positivity, Perfuma, even if everything else about being a gay, broke millennial is  _ terrible.  _ But that does explains why Adora’s in a good mood again.”   

“Huh?” Adora raised an eyebrow at the mention of her name.

“Thank you Universe!” clapping her hands together, Glimmer shouted, “I thought you were on the verge of murdering someone and I was so worried it was going to be a customer, no offense bae. Love you more than  _ anything _ , but I didn’t want you killing anyone.”

“That is  _ so _ true!” Perfuma started before Adora could interrupt with another “huh?” “Adora, your aura is so much clearer as of recently, and your energy is just, so centered.”

“Centered energy? What’s the hell is that and how’d you get the universe to like give you some?” asked Mermista.

_ The Universe didn’t give me anything...  _ Adora crossed her arms and looked that floor, the image that had been haunting her of late crossing her mind because the in a way, the universe had given her something, as cheesy and stupid as it sounded. Cerulean and gold cutting like glass in the dark, a star system of freckles, a wicked tongue running over sharp teeth. A leather jacket and fingerless gloves. Long glorious curls of ebony glowing in the amber streetlight. Laughter like a lullaby from her childhood. And the smell of cinnamon.  _ No, no! Stop it! Stop it Adora! Focus! We’re not having this conversation again! _

“The Universe didn’t give me anything,” Adora scoffed, her mouth suddenly dry. “I’ve just been writing a lot lately, and I dunno, it just really helps my mood.”

That wasn’t a complete and total lie. After weeks of grueling and frustrating writers block, it had been Catra who had given Adora the power to face the insecurities keeping her from her blank word document. With Catra as a character, it seemed the final pieces were falling into places. Four chapters were mapped out in the hours after her old friend had given her notebook back. She just fit so naturally and beautifully in the story. The next night Adora returned to her first chapter, and for the first time in a long time, as she stared at Catra’s drawings for She-Ra, remembered that she had something to offer the world by way of this story. And it was cathartic to tell her own story, this time with Catra by her side. The evil she sought to show the reader was the same evil they’d face side by side, the trauma that had ripped them brutally apart brought them together again, it was only right for the story be about their shared and sacred struggle. Because if the past weeks had taught Adora anything, is that the story didn’t end where she thought it had. Adora’s demons took the form of Catra, and Catra’s took the form of Adora. So if Adora’s pain was on the paper, then Catra’s needed to be too. They were connected for after all, for some reason brought back into each other’s life by chance or some violent happenstance and if Adora didn’t understand how now, then writing it, letting the words flow from her with no judgement-only curiosity- was going to show her how.

And she be damned if it wasn’t going to show her why.

Glimmer, being She-Ra’s most affluent fan, perked up at the mention of Adora writing, her poofy pink hair moving like she was a cartoon character. “Bae, you’re back to writing She-Ra? Oh my God! It’s finally happening!”

“About time.” Mermista smiled, a real smile, as she twirled a strand of here blue hair.

“Okay, is it just brainstorming or, like have you actually written anything? And when can we read it?” Glimmer trailed off. In her seat, she was practically shaking with excitement, Perfuma’s gaze following her movement as she bounced in her seat.

Bow nodded, “Yeah, you been holding out on us so long I was starting to get worried. So what are we talking here, like one thousand words or two thousand?”

“Well, you’re definitely getting warmer.” Adora winked at them, leaning with both hands on the table.

“Four thousand?” gasped Glimmer.

“Warmer.”

“Uh, eight thousand?” Perfuma venture a guess.

“Try  _ twenty  _ thousand.” Adora told them, the happiness and pride she’d been holding back exploding within her.

“Damn!” Bow and Glimmer yelled at the same time as Perfuma clasped her hands together.

“When- when did you do this?” asked Glimmer, her purple eyebrows furrowed. “You’ve been working like  _ nonstop _ !”

“I said I was writing I didn’t say I was sleeping well.” Adora rubbed her arm, trying to ignore the intense gaze of Perfuma. Her floral friend had recently endowed Adora with her homeopathic sleep antidotes, to help ease Adora’s chronic insomnia. Since that first night with Catra, Adora wrestled with sleep on a nightly basis. Her general unhappiness and spiralling depression didn’t make things better. Perfuma offered her resources when Adora mentioned it offhand one day when the florist was eating lunch with Bow, and Adora, who didn’t want to relive the sleepless nights that haunted her following both Mara and Razz’s deaths, decided to give Perfuma’s ideas a try. Only by the time Perfuma had whipped them up, Catra gave Adora her notebook back and unlocked her writer’s block. Her insomnia became an advantage and it gave her a edge.

It’s not like Adora didn’t make the effort to try and sleep; she’d work the night shift at Light Spinner’s and then take the bus home with the intention of going right to her room, trying Perfuma’s strange smelling remedies, stretching and brushing her teeth before flopping in onto her queen mattress, but on the bus she would just get so caught up in writing whatever scene down in her notebook that was holding her captivation, and by the time she got to her room and the heels were thrown off, all intentions of trying to sleep were thrown out in favor of being productive. Three days of this had equated to almost 20,000 words, a miracle in Adora’s mind. Her pride and relief eclipsed her exhaustion. Her book was coming to life after all this time! How much did it matter she was in the clouds during her shift at Glimmer’s and taking power naps at her corner desk at Light Spinners?  

“That’s not healthy, Adora.” Perfuma held her gaze, and Adora rolled her shoulders, trying to swallow her guilt. She understood that her friends cared about her, but this is what  _ Adora _ cared about.

“I know, it’s just- ugh, I have to act now! Who knows how long this motivation spell is gonna last? I mean, I can’t just make character playlists and Pinterest boards all the time!” retorted Adora.

“So have I kicked anybody’s ass yet?”  Mermista asked, preventing any lectures from Perfuma or her roomates.

“Yeah!” Adora smiled, high fiving Mermista, as she thought back to the scenes she’d written that took place in Mermista’s seaside kingdom of Salinas, where the beginnings of the new alliance began to form as She-Ra, Bow, and Glimmer teamed up with the ocean princess and her sea shanty singing pirate to take down Force Captain Catra’s squad.

“Okay so then I was  _ way  _ off.” chuckled Bow as he leaned back in his seat.

“What- what about?” Adora dropped Mermista’s hand. Bow and Perfuma were exchanging a mysterious look, and her stomach twisted. “About She-Ra? I told you guys I would-”

“No!” Bow shut her down as quickly as she started. “I meant about your good mood! I thought it had to do with that super hot Uber driver who dropped you off a couple days ago. You know, the one you were  _ all  _ over.”

_ Ooooooh nooooo. _

Never before had Adora seen her friends turn to her so fast, and with so much joyous anticipation and excitement. Glimmer’s face had lit up like a sparkly Christmas tree, Perfuma’s jaw had dropped, and Mermista set her phone  _ down  _ on the table. “Adora!” Glimmer voice echoed off the walls and Adora stepped back, “Why didn’t you tell us you met someone?”

“Yeah, Adora! Spill that tea!” Perfuma chimed in and out of the corner of her eye, Adora could see Bow biting his knuckle, and her nostrils flared as she realized it had nothing to do with spilling her secret about Catra and everything to do with Perfuma’s misuse of her newest colloquialism.

It had completely escaped Adora’s memory that Catra had met one of her roommates the night of her shameless- or should she say shameful- unhinged drunken meltdown. Catra had only mentioned it in passing and Adora, laser focused on regaining her notebook, hadn’t bothered to pester the other woman about who she’d met. Neither Glimmer or Bow had said anything about the night she came home drunk and drooling, rather choosing to make sure Adora survived her hangover, and in her explosion of productivity on She-Ra, Adora had forgotten that one of them  _ met _ Catra.

_ Uh oh.  _ Adora wanted to kick herself. She was about to be dragged over the coals by everyone she loved, that’s what was about to happen.  _ Ugh! _ This could have been easily avoided if she had just told Bow and Glimmer about the first night with her old friend, or maybe even the second night, but Adora couldn’t bring herself too despite all her chances. It was all so new and fragile, yet at the same time it was an ancient part of her, buried deep within her past. Catra was from a part of her life that Adora didn’t access often, a part that Glimmer and Bow didn’t really know as much as they thought they did ( _ Thank you Mara, for setting a  _ fantastic _ example on sharing very painful things).  _ And in all her confusion, and in all the hurt and all the healing, Adora wasn’t sure how to pop “Hey, my best friend from the abusive orphanage I grew up in and that I haven’t seen in thirteen years because I basically abandoned her is now my  _ Uber  _ driver.” on the two most important people in her life . Phrasing it differently might help, but for a burgeoning author, Adora couldn’t figure out how best to say it.

So how the hell was she supposed to say it now?

“I uh-” Adora stuttered, all expectant eyes drilling into her, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

_ Oh that’s a _ great  _ idea Adora! Lie to them! _

“Uh, sure.” clicking his tongue, Bow scoffed again. “You called her ‘my Catra.’”  _ I did? Oh no.  _ “And she called you ‘princess.’” Perfuma and Glimmer gasped in tandem, reaching for each other's hands like they were watching a soap opera unfold. “So yeah, I’d say you two were vibing.  _ Hard.” _

_ I! Was! Drunk!  _ Adora groaned, throwing her hands in her head. The ironic part was that Bow didn’t even know the half of it. Vibing? That didn’t even cover the flirting, or the tension, or the pining.

Well, the pining on Adora’s end.

“Yeah Adora, get some!” cheered Mermista.

“So,” grabbing Adora’s hands, Perfuma pulled her close as she yelped, “what’s she like? Tell us  _ everything.  _ Oh, do you know her birthday? We have to make sure she’s compatible with Capricorn-”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Perfuma, she’s  _ just _ my Uber driver. I mean- she  _ was _ , Glimmer stop looking at me like that!”

“I’m sorry!” Glimmer whined, waving her hands in surrender, “I’m just  _ really  _ happy you met someone cause it’s been a really long time, but at the same time I’m a little mad you didn’t tell us! I told you about Rebecca!” This piece of information was met with blank stares, and with a pout on her face Glimmer reminded them “Rebecca, the cashier at Aldi? We  _ really  _ hit off, remember?”

“Oh right, Rebecca.” Bow nodded, “the cashier whose phone number you  _ didn’t  _ get.”

Scoffing, Glimmer took her hurt pride and turned back to the table and Mermista took over. “So if Adora’s not gonna tell us about who she boned-”

“There was  _ no  _ boning! Nothing happened!”

Mermista flew past that, “cause “nothing” happened, what about you Bow? You gonna tell us about this super hot Uber driver? I want deets.”

“Ugh!”

“Okay, picture a tinier, darker, and angrier Rosa Diaz, like the whole get up. Leather jacket, steel toed boots, ripped jeans and I think a belly button ring-”  _ she has a belly button ring? How did I  _ not  _ catch that?  _ “-She also looked super angry, like she could kill you at  _ any  _ second- except when she was looking at a certain someone...” Adora shook her head as Bow clamored on, Mermista, Perfuma, and Glimmer at rapt attention, “Oh, oh and she has heterochromia! She was totally awesome!”

“What the hell is heterochromia?” Mermista’s voice was dry and Adora couldn’t help her quick reply.

“It’s this rare genetic condition where her irises are two different colors, hers are blue and goldish yellow.” And just like that, her friends turned on her the second the quick words were out her mouth.

_ Shit. _

Bow threw his hands in the air, all pompous in his victory. “Aha! I knew you two were vibing! You know what color her eyes are!”

“So?” stuttered Adora, “I just noticed, okay?”

“But you also knew it was a  _ rare _ genetic condition,” Glimmer pointed out, “And who just knows that kind of thing off the top of their head? So to us, it’s sounds like there not  _ nothing _ going on.”

“It sounds like you two boned-”

“Ugh  _ stop _ saying boned, Mermista!” Adora yelled, fingers pulling at her hair. “It’s weird! Ugh, just stop it.” Shuddering, Adora fell to the empty seat between Bow and Glimmer. She was going to have to do this, wasn’t she? It would get them to stop asking questions, stop saying things that made Adora wonder what Catra’s warm, soft skin would feel like pressed up against hers, the taste of her lips and the cutting feel of her teeth, fingers lost in a forest of curls- oh God, Adora was spiraling. She had to shut this down, and she had to shut it down now. Those thoughts were  _ supposed  _ to be off limits. Adora wanted Catra to be in her life, to be her friend once more, and she wasn’t about sacrifice that because her friends wouldn’t shut up about them… doing, well- that. They were also her friends, and they deserved to know the truth, even if telling the truth meant holding in her hands shards of glass, painful shards of her past that cut into her skin so deep she was going to bleed her truth whether she wanted to or not. “Look I didn’t- I didn’t meet Catra the night I was drunk or even a few weeks ago-”

“A few weeks ago?” Bow’s eye widened, “Wait, how long has this been going on?”

“ _ Nothing  _ is going on-”hissed Adora, stopping as she caught the looks on her friends’ faces. Glimmer wore an expression of worry Adora knew all too well.  _ What  _ was she doing? It wasn’t them she was mad at it, not really. Taking a deep breath, Adora started again “You guys know how I grew up in foster care? Before-  before Mara found me and adopted me?”

“Yeah, of course.” said Glimmer.

“Catra and I... knew each other when I was in foster care. We grew up together, in this really,  _ really  _ shitty orphanage and the lady that raised us was… awful,” Adora breathed out, wiping the tears that dusted her cheeks. “I haven’t seen in Catra in, god thirteen years? It was us against the world, and then I just walked out. She was like my other half, and she was my  _ best  _ friend, and bunkmate-”

“Oh my  _ God _ they were bunkmates.” whispered Perfuma, and all the painful energy Adora had trapped them in was broken as they all erupted into laughter.

“Perfuma, so  _ so  _ proud of you, but so not the time.” Bow said, barely holding it together. Perfuma giggled, practically beaming and she smiled at Adora, so much kindness in her eyes.

Glimmer’s hands found Adora's. Adora squeezed, leaning on her friend for support. “Thank you for telling us Adora. I know talking about that kind of stuff isn’t exactly easy.”

“And we shouldn’t have pestered you.” Perfuma added, “Right, Mermista?”

“Yeah, sorry about that babe. I just didn’t know.” the young lawyer shrugged.

“It’s just really painful to talk about that stuff,”  _ by the way, it’s all going in She-Ra,  _ “and then she just showed back up as my Uber driver of all things, and I dunno, it felt weird to bring up.”

“So what are you guys doing now?” asked Bow. His eyes shone with curiosity and excitement, but he looked ready to step in and rescue Adora if she faltered again.

“Um,” Adora rubbed her arm, “I guess we’re just trying to catch up? She’s driven me home a couple times and uh, I got her phone number-”

“See!” throwing his arms up, Bow succeeded in knocking Adora into Glimmer, “That’s how you do it, Glimmer!  _ Adora _ here knows what she’s doing.”

_ I really don’t. _

Glimmer was ready with her retaliation, swinging to look at her best friend she shoved Adora into him. “I know too! We were  _ totally  _ vibing and she was flirting, Bow! Flirting!”

“ _ Digits _ , Glimmer!” shouted Bow, “That’s what matters!”

“Um, okay you guys it’s not that big of a deal.” Adora said, forcing them apart.

And the truth was, that it wasn’t. Adora only had Catra’s phone number because she yanked it out of Uber’s cold dying hands, and she promised Catra she wasn’t going to abuse it. Well, Adora just promised Catra that she wasn’t going to stalk her, but she was just going to assume that that’s what she meant.  _ Don’t fucking spam me Adora or I will rip your throat out with my perfect nails and never speak to you again.  _ Something like that.

There was a million things Adora wanted to say to Catra, a million things she  _ needed  _ to say, but she didn’t want to be  _ that  _ overtexter and annoy Catra into running out of her life. She also needed to pull back spending, and that meant Uber was off the table for just a little while. This… whatever it was, Adora had  _ no  _ idea what to label it, weird new relationship (her best guess) they had was like a game of poker. Except Adora  _ sucked  _ at poker- Razz and Mara used to  _ destroy  _ her- because she happened to be the most impatient person in the world and now she was sitting at the card table with the person who possessed the most skilled (and wickedly sexy) poker face in the world. Adora couldn’t show all her cards, thus losing the game entirely, but if she didn’t play a hand soon Catra would call it quits, count her losses, and leave Adora in the dust.

She knew the hand she wanted to play. The drawings. It was killing Adora just how much she wanted to talk to Catra about them, just how much she wanted to say thank you. There was no text message that convey the lengths of her appreciation and gratitude. That would have to be done in person, and soon enough so Catra didn’t think she’d scared Adora off with the gesture. (God every time Adora thought about this, about seeing Catra again, she spiraled, and she spiraled hard.  _ What  _ was Catra doing to her?) And then there was her writing.

Adora was dying to tell Catra about her character in She-Ra; the spurned and spiteful shadow turned villainess, who wore like evil like a crown. The outcast determined to rise above her low beginnings and to bring those who hurt her to their knees. She-Ra’s first friend, sworn adversary, and one true equal.

_ That’s what Catra wants, right? To be my equal? That’s why she wanted to be the villain? _

There was also the part of Adora that wondered if maybe… Catra could be a part of the story in another way. In the quiet hours of night, her writing playlist having ended somewhere around two or three am, Adora would look away from the keyboard to see Catra’s drawings right above her, and she couldn’t help but wonder if there was life Catra could give to the story, life that Adora could not. As much as she loved writing, creating and building this never ending universe in her mind, gleefully obsessing over tiny details as her type A attributes found a home, she had to admit it was lonely. Yes, her friends shared the world with her but they weren’t apart of the actual creation of project and Adora couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like… to have a partner.

But every time Adora pulled out her phone to try and text Catra that she wanted to meet again, she’d overthink and completely chicken out. Catra did something nice for her,  _ that’s  _ it, Adora would remind herself as she tossed her phone across the room or shoved in her back pocket with intention of never,  _ ever  _ looking at again.  _ Nope, nope, nope! _ There was no point in over analyzing the things Catra said or did, or getting her hopes up. Because this was the girl who’d out right said She-Ra was dumb.

This was also the girl who’d said Adora was a good writer.

_ Play the hand Adora,  _ Adora could hear Catra’s purring in ear,  _ and for fuck’s sake, don’t chicken out. Thought you were better than that, Princess. _

Those imaginary words played on repeat, teasing her brain like Catra’s stiletto nails tracing her exposed skin, until Adora just couldn’t take it anymore. When Glimmer came at 9:30 that morning to help her open, Adora took out her phone and this time didn’t close her message app after writing a quick text message. And this time she had the balls to press send.

_ Adora’s cell 9:32 am _

_ Working late tonight. Gonna need an Uber. Maybe I’ll see you? -Adora _

And yeah, Adora knew that it was pretty lame considering it took her  _ three  _ days to come up with. It was the best she could do, without looking like a total idiot; it sounded generally disinterested- like she wouldn’t be upset if Catra shot her down- no long winded message about the drawings or her newest disaster of a plan to keep Catra in her life, no emoji’s the other woman would find moronic, with her name signed so Catra would know it was her on the other side. It wasn’t great, Bow and Glimmer could have definitely drafted something better, but for now it kept Catra out of Adora’s head. For the most part.

Now all that was left was to wait for Catra to play her hand.

“Look Bow, all I’m saying is that she was wearing a Paramore enamel  _ and  _ said she liked my hair cut. See? Totally into me!” Glimmer was yelling at Bow.

“And all I’m saying is that I’m surrounded by a bunch of hopeless lesbians! I mean, I love you guys, all  _ so _ much, but it’s like three brain cell representation out here.” Bow replied, gazing at Glimmer, Perfuma and Adora as Mermista snorted.

“Hey!” Perfuma and Glimmer shouted, indignation on in their faces as Adora just shrugged and said “that’s fair.”

“You are being  _ so  _ unfair Bow-” Glimmer started to say, only to be interrupted by her phone buzzing, “ugh, nevermind we’ll continue this conversation later.” She waved him off, pulling out her cell. Adora resisted the urge to check her own. Catra’s silence was suffocating, and Adora couldn’t help but wonder if Catra was on the other side having the time of her freaking life, weaving a web to torture her in. Checking her phone to find an empty inbox would be a killing blow, so Adora refrained from even peeking her entire shift. Silly would she be to think there was something waiting for her now.

“But I thought we were binging Killing Eve later.” Bow pouted, deflating in his chair “It’s like why talk about our depressing love lives when we could be watching the goddess that is Sandra Oh?”

_ And Jodie Comer’s so hot,  _ Adora’s heart sunk as she thought about her best friends binging TV while she wasted the night away at Misogyny Incorporated.  _ Catra  _ please _ text me back.  _

Eyes still glued to her screen, Glimmer gave an absent minded nod “Uh huh, that’s sounds good Bow. Ugh, damn it! Stupid online assistance! They said they can’t help with the stupid oven!”

“Told you they wouldn’t be able to do anything.” mumbled Bow, and Adora leaned over to look at the email on Glimmer’s screen.

“Wait” Perfuma wound a finger in her hair, “what’s going on with the oven?”

“We got this new oven a couple weeks ago. It’s all fancy and stuff-”

“It’s a Smart Oven.” Adora took over for Bow, “Glimmer thought it’d be really helpful in the kitchen and convinced Angella to let us buy one in addition to the others, but we broke it on the first day.”

“And  _ someone  _ lost the receipt so now we can’t return it.” Bow leaned across the table to stare at Glimmer.

Glimmer threw her phone down on the table so hard that if weren’t for Adora’s reflexes, it would’ve spun off the table and shattered.“If we don’t find a way to fix this my mom is going to  _ murder  _ me!”

“Why?” Mermista asked, “You guys were the ones that bought the oven  _ and  _ this is your business, so like she can shove it?”

“It’s not that simple, Mermista! Mom has stock in the bakery and if we don’t do well, she’ll tell me to shut it down and then I’ll have to go to-” Glimmer shuddered, hugging herself, “ _medical_ school. Ugh, I’d rather die!”

“Hey, what if I talk to her? We have a pretty good relationship, if I do say so myself. Angella’s like the closest thing I have to a mom. Oh, and we started taking Zumba together on Tuesdays so I can talk her up.” suggested Bow, a twinkle in his eye.

“You do Zumba with Glimmer’s mom?” Adora’s playful judgement barely beat the wrath of Mermista’s.

“Uh, yeah! She goes to same Y as me, so we decided to start taking classes together. Hey, that reminds me- Perfuma, would you be interested in taking a water aerobics class with us? I’d ask Mermista but she’s “above” that kinda thing-”

“ _ Stop  _ hanging out with my mom!” Glimmer swung herself across Adora to wack Bow in the arm, repeatedly. Bow shoved her away, saying something about his own agency and how Glimmer  _ never _ wanted to go to the YMCA with him, Adora about to tear them apart when her phone buzzed in her back pocket.  _ It’s not her, you  _ know  _ it’s not her, don’t look at it Adora,  _ but she was way past that. Four hours was long enough. As Bow and Glimmer fought like children over her, Adora angled her phone away from them. Her breath caught. Two new messages.

_ Catra J 1:09 pm _

__ hey adora

Adora’s heart skipped a beat.

_ Catra J 1:10 pm _

see u then princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for clarification, i have no idea to play poker. But i imagine I'd run into the same problems as Adora. also perfuma landed one of my favorite jokes that I ever managed to stumble upon while writing. 
> 
> me: am I putting to much emphasis on their feelings about their financial state?  
> also me: *has a panic attack when I meet a college grad working at the grocery store*
> 
> remember it's a two parter, but I would love to hear what you thought of this one! 
> 
> much love, savannah!


	6. maybe you'll take the long way home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora’s heart sunk as she ran her fingers over the doodle she’d drawn up on the bus here of Catra’s signature headpiece. She didn’t get Catra.
> 
> But she wanted too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we go again!
> 
> little heads up and trigger warning for talk of child abuse, both emotion and physical.

It was always surprised Adora how quiet, how eerie and peaceful, the city of Bright Moon could be this late into the night. The  _ west _ side of the city, she corrected her observation as she locked the class doors to the building. Downtown Bright Moon was a story all on its own, filled with the livelihood of the cities’ citizens, their dreams the blood of the city and the epicentre of downtown, the beating, bursting heart. All of Bright Moon’s best features were in Downtown. The restaurants, movie theatres, bars, a mall of quaint little shops. The University that drew so many people from so many different parts of the world. Glimmer’s bakery. Adora knew it was long closed as of the late hour, Bow and Glimmer making good use of their shared Hulu account (Bow paid for Spotify, Adora paid for Netflix, and Glimmer covered Hulu.) and dozing off on the worn couch that was too small for all three of them (it would help if they sat right). Even in her envy, Adora missed Glimmer’s panicking about the broken Smart Oven and Bow’s comments about how mortals didn’t deserve Sandra Oh, Adora missed their bickering and the way the always made up. Adora missed them.

Sighing, Adora plopped down on a nearby bench and pulled her notebook out of her backpack, thinking back to the sleeping West Side. It was the first part of Bright Moon Adora was introduced to, but in eight years she’d lived here it still didn’t match up with the other parts of the city she fell in love with. Adora knew the West Side of Bright Moon first because it began as the medical sector and she knew that this side of the city submitted itself to the quiet of the night because she’d spent so many long nights gazing out hospital windows, wishing for the faraway jubilous lights and bustling noise of downtown to come and cover the harsh stimulus of Mara’s hospital room. Even now, in the quiet darkness on a street of empty buildings, the only noticeable sound the buzzing of the streetlight, Adora could still hear the echoing sound of the heart monitor as she tried to focus on reading Percy Jackson on the edge of her godmother’s bed and not on the way it faltered and faded.

_ “Let go, Adora.”  _ Dr. Hope said. Adora never knew if she meant let go of her memories or her emotions, but in the end it didn’t matter because Adora wasn’t good at either. So in the flickering light of the street lamp, Adora began to write furiously in her notebook. New ideas for dialogue had come to her at work and now was her chance to get them down.

“ _ A: Catra, this isn’t a game!”  _ she wrote before switching to her red pen.

_ “C: It’s *never* been a game, Adora! I’m after something better-” _

“No that sounds weird. And stupid.” Adora mumbled to herself before crossing it out. Still, she liked where it was heading. Earlier she’d been so caught up in that weird metaphor that interacting like Catra was like playing poker, like what they were building was just twisted fun for Catra all because she just wanted to beat Adora at her own game for once, that it gave her this idea.

How did someone who Adora had known every single thing about- what she’d eat for breakfast, where she hid Whiskers from the other kids, what type of markers she’d draw with in art class- become someone she couldn’t predict _anything_ about? Why would someone so cynical and cut off, someone so irate and infuriated… someone so intelligent and beautiful and sweet- want anything to do with someone like her? Adora’s heart sunk as she ran her fingers over the doodle she’d drawn up on the bus here of Catra’s signature headpiece. She didn’t _get_ Catra.

But she wanted too.

“ _ It’s *never* been a game, Adora I’m after something  _ ~~_better_ ~~ _~~more important ugh god i wish had a thesaurus~~ right now  _ _ bigger. And *nothing*, not even you, is gonna stand in my way-” _

_ HONK! _

“Fuck!” Ripped from her fictional word, Adora jumped three feet in the air and the notebook flew from her hands. Adora looked up having landed back on the bench hard, heart racing and escaped wisps of hair falling her face, to be met by piercing blue and gold. Catra was staring at her out the passenger window, one gloved hand resting on the steering wheel.

The corner of her mouth perked up, “Hey Adora.”

“Catra!” panted Adora “Can’t you just send me a ‘hey it’s me your Uber, I’m outside’ text like everyone else?”

“Yeah duh, but then I wouldn’t get to see the look on your face when I scared you shitless!” she cackled as Adora shoved her notebook back in her Jansport, “Seriously though, I’ve been sitting here for like five fucking minutes. Did you really not see me pull up?”

“Uh no, I didn’t.” Adora said. Had Catra really been there as long as she said?  _ She’s probably exaggerating. Why does she want to get under my skin so badly?  _ Eying the passenger door, Adora decided two could play at that game and opened the door.

Catra only tapped her nails against the steering wheel as Adora took a seat. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

“Is anything I say gonna change your mind?” asked Catra, watching Adora in the rearview mirror.

“No.” laughed Adora, but Catra didn’t respond. The sound of the engine filled her ears and Catra pulled away from the curb. Eventually the engine stilled to a hum and an uncomfortable silence settled between them. Shifting in her seat, Adora fiddled with the hem of her blouse. “So...um,” she nibbled on her bottom lip thinking  _ What do I do here? Ugh, what would Bow say?  _ “how- how was your day?”

“You know we  _ really _ don’t have to do the small talk thing.” Catra cut her off. Adora caught her expression out of the corner of her eye and was taken aback. She looked almost nervous, mouth set in a firm lime, eyes wide and trained on the road. Gone was the childish teasing from before.  _ She’s  _ nervous?  _ Around me? But why? _

“Oh, um okay.” With that, Adora surrendered to the silence.  _ I guess we’re gonna just drive the whole way like this.  _ She turned to look out the window, her disappointed expression staring back at her, and the somber darkness of the upper west side began to wake in the light of downtown. Glimmer and Bow had probably finished their Killing Eve binging for the evening and gone to their bedrooms, leaving a quiet apartment for Adora to return too. A quiet side of the city, a quiet car ride, and a quiet apartment at the end of the line. Letting out a long sigh, Adora smushed her forehead onto the window.

“Adora, you’re gonna smudge my window up.” Catra’s voice was hazy with a tinge of annoyance. Adora’s eyes flickered away from the window for half a second.

“I thought you didn’t want small talk.”  

“Yeah, cause small talk is fucking dumb.” explained Catra, like it was painfully obvious. But to Adora, it wasn’t. Nothing with Catra was. But maybe the first step to getting to know the stranger next to her was to give up trying to read her. “Do you  _ really _ want to hear about my stupid day?”

“Yes.” Adora mumbled against the glass.

Catra looked away from the steering wheel and for a second they swerved. “What- why?”

“Because I want to know about  _ you _ !” Adora’s voice burst through her anxiety and she pushed herself away from the window. “Every time we see each other it’s like we have to start over and I don’t want to do that anymore, Catra. I can’t- I can’t go back to the beginning tonight and I just wish… I wish you would work with me and not against me.”

“Okay, what the hell do you mean ‘starting over?’ We know  _ plenty _ about each other, Adora.” Catra just rolled her eyes, but Adora could see it in the way her jaw was set and her knuckles straining against her gloves that she was holding back.

_ I don’t what that means!  _ Adora wanted to scream. “Ugh fine! You win, we’ll go back to driving in silence.” It was dramatic to throw herself against the seat like she did, but Adora couldn’t help herself. Maybe she was just bad at this and that’s why Catra wouldn’t take the bait. She’d never been a delicate person. Force, whether physical or emotional, always worked in her favor but her tactic of using a battery ram to shatter Catra’s boarded up windows only backfired.

Catra wasn’t like her friends in Bright Moon. Adora loved her ragtag game of heroes like she would love her family, because they were the closest thing she had to a family, but they didn’t know or understand tragedy like Catra and Adora. It was born into them. Yes, her friends knew discrimination, the piercing pain of rejection, and nothing would  _ ever  _ make up for that, but in the end they had families- parents who bought Pride flags and always let them come home during the holidays, siblings and cousins who called, relatives to fight with- and they would always have each other. Love had not turned its back on them and life had not given them any reason to be wary of anyone trying to get close.

And besides, Adora reminded herself as she looked down at her hands, Catra had no reason to forgive Adora or even trust her.

_ So why does she keep coming back?! _

“Look, I’m sorry.” Catra’s whispers pulled Adora from her spiral, “I just- fuck, it’s hard to talk about shit sometimes. I’m not exactly good at it. It’s like, really uncomfortable and what if it gets too personal? I know I sound like a fucking loser for saying that-”

“Catra, it’s okay. You don’t- you never sound like that.” Adora, without even a second thought, reached out to touch her shoulder.

“I don’t really believe you.” her laugh was soft and gentle. Adora wanted to save the sound forever and keep it only for herself. The car jerked as it came to a stop at a red light, split eyes caught ocean eyes. Catra’s face morphed as she registered Adora was touching her and her gaze fell to where Adora’s hand lay on her leather jacket. “Uh…”

_ Shit! Abort Adora! She’s gonna kill you!  _ “Oh, uh, sorry.”

Catra swallowed. “S’fine.” Green light flooded the car and they moved forward.

“Hey, I have an idea!” Adora perked up after realizing she was still breathing and her jugular remained unslashed. “What if we limit ourselves to a certain amount of questions? And for every question I ask, you can ask me one. Okay?”

“How many questions?”

“Um, how about twenty?”

“Like the game?” scoffed Catra, an alluring smile on her face.

“Yeah, like the game! I guess I’ll go first?” Adora mumbled her last few words.

Her driver just shrugged. “Whatever you want Princess.”

Princess. In Catra voice that word made Adora dizzy. Adora was never dizzy. Swallowing as she hid her sweating palms in her suit jacket, Adora started “Um, how was your day?”

“Uh seriously Adora?” Catra practically hit her head on the steering wheel and Adora couldn’t help but bursting out into nervous laughter. “Did you do this whole fucking thing  _ just  _ to ask me how my day was? That’s kinda genius… ugh, stop looking at me like that! You win! My day was fucking boring. All I did was work. There.”

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Adora asked, nudging the other girl with her shoulder. Again, no thought to preface that risky action.  _ Why do I keep touching her, do I have some deathwish? _

“I guess not. This is still really stupid.” rolling her pretty eyes, Catra gave another nonchalant shrug. “So, is it my turn?”

“Yep!” Now Adora’s armpits were starting to sweat. Glancing to the dashboard, Adora saw that the air conditioning was on.  _ Fuck me. _

“Uh… why is this so hard?” growled Catra before perking up, “How was your day?”

“Hey Catra that was my question!” the two girls erupted into raucous laughter at Adora’s accusation that prompted Catra to flip her off  _ and  _ stuck her tongue out. Catra’s laugh was like a melody, like a song Adora wanted to have on repeat. It’d had been so long since they’d laughed like this, together. And in this moment, in the darkness of her car with light of Bright Moon leaking in, it was like no time had passed. No pain lay waste to their lives. They were twelves years old again, giggling as they stayed up way too late and fought over the blanket, hoping Mrs. Weaver wouldn’t hear them and Lonnie wouldn’t snitch. Adora hadn’t realized just how much she wanted that, the carelessness and happiness in their relationship, until right now. Is that why she was fighting so hard to make it happen? “My day was,” Adora wiped the tears from her eyes and struggled not to giggle, “uh my day was-”

_ “Uh, sure.” clicking his tongue, Bow scoffed again. “You called her ‘my Catra. And she called you ‘princess’. So yeah, I’d say you two were vibing. Hard.” _

_ Shut up! Bow is not right! I mean he usually is but that is  _ not  _ what is happening here. We’re just friends! Right?  _ “-uh my day was boring too.  _ Super  _ boring. Like, nothing happened. At all.”

“Um okay.” Catra sent her a look.

_ Why are you  _ so  _ bad at this Adora?!  _ Taking a deep breath, Adora tried to shake off her awkwardness. “So my turn?” Catra nodded, “Uh, how are your roommates?”

“Stupid.” she replied within the second and Adora jumped back a little. “Shit, I mean Scorpia had a bunch of her performers over last night and they all got trashed so I didn’t get any sleep and  _ now  _ I have a fucking migraine! And Entrapta, that little shit, brought home a rat from some pet store and is keeping her!. Last night Emily jumped on me in the fucking shower!”

“Emily?” Adora stiffled a laugh.

“That’s the rat’s stupid name.” mumbled Catra and Adora snorted. “How’s Rainbow? Still rocking cactus boxers?”

Adora’s jaw dropped before she pieced together that that must’ve been what Bow was wearing when Catra dropped Adora’s drunken self off at their apartment. His room always got the warmest out of the three so his pajamas leaned on the creative side.  _ Oh, Bow.  _ “He’s fine. It’s Bow by the way.”

“Hey, you were the one who called him Rainbow first.”  _ I did? _

“I wouldn’t know Catra, I can’t remember anything about that night.” Adora said, rolling her eyes as Catra cackled.

“Yeah duh, Adora.” she laughed, their eyes meeting again before Catra slammed on the brakes. “Fucking shit! Not this again! Stupid fucking Bright Moon!”

“Huh?”

Catra grabbed her phone from her pocket and Adora saw her pulling up Google Maps with a few clicks of her flawless nails. “That counts as a question. And I’m talking about the traffic, Princess.” she flipped her phone for a split second and Adora caught a long red line. “We’re gonna be stuck in fucking traffic going through downtown. Again! Ugh. I hate Bright Moon!” This time she really did hit her head on the steering wheel, a loud resounding thwack reverberated through the car.

“Catra, be careful! You said you had a migraine, don’t hurt yourself!” Adora thought of Glimmer and Bow lecturing her after the concussion incident, thought of their frustration and the worry in their faces, and she understood. Wow, did she owe them apology, she thought to herself as she laid a tentative hand on Catra’s back. Under a mass of curls, Catra looked up at her, her eyes narrowed. “What? What’s wrong?”  _ Did I say something? Did I do something- oh God my hand- _

“It’s just,” Catra blew the curls that had fallen in her face away and Adora caught sight of the gray streak in her hair, the one by her ear. Most of the time it was hidden, just something Adora wondered still existed or was to remain a memory, but now it was just exposed as Catra was, “it’s been a while since someone… you know, cared. About my head and all.”

_ Wait, what about Scorpia? Or Entrapta? Do they not notice she’s in pain? Is she always in pain?  _ “Catra, why do you hate Bright Moon?”

“Is that your next question?” Adora nodded and Catra sighed, “I dunno, it’s just so fucking pretentious and annoying and they’re  _ always  _ doing construction. And working here is like a constant reminder I’m dirt poor. This is like one of the wealthiest cities in the whole damn world, full of opportunity I’m still… I’m still on the edge. I dunno, that’s a shitty answer.”

“You know, you don’t know always have to invalidate yourself.” Adora pointed out.

“The hell does that even mean?”

“Never mind,” Adora took her hand off Catra, ever reluctantly, “so… it’s your turn by the way.”

“Mmm yeah, I know. Just trying to think of something that’ll make your pretty little head spin,” she winked and Adora shifted in her seat. “Oh dude, how’s work? Did those shitheads give you problems for getting drunk?”

Adora let out a long sigh. “You could say that…” After taking the next night off, her coworkers had enough ammo to kill and immediately began to fire the second she walked in. But Adora didn’t go do without a fight. Mara and Razz may have raised a stubborn fool, but they didn’t raise a quitter or an idiot, and Adora had the sense to have her headphones the second she walked in. “They kept coming up to my desk while I was trying to work and telling me I couldn’t handle my liquor-”

“You can’t. You can’t for shit!” laughed Catra.

“Not the point Catra! Anyways I just started bringing my laptop and I work in the bathroom most of the time.”

“Adora, that’s super fucked up. Why do you let them do treat you like that?” Catra turned to poke her in the forehead, her brows creased. Adora thought she looked cute, and even sweet, as she lay on the steering wheel.

“It’s not that bad. It’s nice in there, they have potpourri and this couch for nursing mothers, so it’s not like I sit in the stall! And besides idiot Chad can’t come in the ladies’ room. God, I kinda wish he would, then I could get file an actual harassment claim and get his ass fired. Oh! That reminds me!” Adora reached down for her backpack and started digging as Catra made some incoherent comment about Adora being into Chad’s ass.  _ You’re the one with a cute ass, I think- SHUT UP ADORA! _ “Aha!” From her Jansport, Adora pulled a bag of kettle corn and began to wrestle with the fancy red ribbon on top along with the hand written note to get it open.

“What’s that?”

“It’s kettle corn! You know, pop corn! I think this stuff is from that fancy store in downtown-”

“Oh, Pop It?” Catra cut in, taking the bag from Adora when she failed to open it with her brute strength. Adora couldn’t help but smile as she watched her attack the ribbon with her long black nails. For someone who hated the city, she sure knew it.  _ Uber driver, right. _ ..

“Yeah! They came to give some pitch today and gave them out to the executives at Light Spinners. Dumb Chad got one because he flirted with the representative for ten minutes. I think she gave him one just to get him to go away, I mean I would, he’s such a dumbass. But anyways after he clocked out I stole it from under his desk.”

Catra stopped dead in her attempt to get the bag open, having abandoned untying the taut red ribbon, the plastic full on her mouth and her teeth pulling at it like it was a cat toy. “You stole  _ this? _ ”

“Yeah! Is that- is that um bad?” Adora shifted her legs.

“It’s fucking awesome!” shouted Catra, shaking the bag of popcorn in the air as Adora laughed, “I can’t believe you  _ stole  _ something, Princess, and from some corporate asshat? That’s just- I’m  _ so _ proud of you! I knew you were still in there!”

_ What does that mean? I’m still in there,  _ Adora started to wonder but before that thought could take her anywhere, Catra had grabbed her hand and began shaking it in her excitement, leaving Adora’s brain to short circuit.  _ She’s holding my hand…  _ For someone so hazardous and rough around the edges, Catra’s skin was incredibly soft. Ice cold too, just like it always was when they were kids. Memories of how she used to attack Adora from behind and put her freezing hands on her face flooded her conscious. Smiling, Adora couldn’t help but notice a callous on her thumb as her melodic laughter rang through the air, from drawing she thought, and the smell of cinnamon hit her full on. It was unlikely anything Adora had ever known. It was everything.

_ Don’t let go,  _ Adora whispered in her own mind, as if she was saying a quiet prayer.

But all good- perfect- things come to end and Catra dropped Adora’s hand once she wrangled the bag open with her other. “Dude this shit is  _ good _ ! I’m so glad you stole this, ha ha! Oh fuck, we’re moving. Here-” the bag hit Adora chest and popcorn exploded all over her and the seat, “eat some before I eat all of it. It’s so good.”

As they moved forward, Adora tried to hide her disappointment and swallow it at the same time. It helped that Catra was an obnoxious chewer, flagging her down by waving her hand all wildly every few seconds for the popcorn to be presented, and Adora couldn’t help but smile just a little a that.  _ Ugh Bow was right,  _ she thought to herself as she shoved popcorn in her mouth ( _ damn,  _ it was good- like an explosion of caramel and chocolate in her mouth) pathetically as she could manage,  _ I am a hopeless lesbian. She holds my hand for  _ two  _ seconds and I’m already writing our wedding invitation. _

Her mouth full, Catra turned to ask “So, are you gonna get in trouble?”

“Huh?” Adora jolted in her seat just a little, too busy daydreaming about red and gold cardstock, and a bit of popcorn flew out of her sweaty hands.  _ Damn it. _

“Dude, are you okay?” Catra narrowed her eyes, but there wasn’t in any malice in her voice. “I was just wondering if you were gonna get in trouble with your asswipe of a boss.”

“Uh, yeah probably.” said Adora rubbing her arm. Chad would most likely throw a mega sized tantrum only the son of old money could pull off, storm into her bosses office and demand the whole floor be swept and every inch desk, cubicle, and bathroom stall inspected. If her boss said no- and Adora had strong doubts anyone had ever said no to Chad in his  _ entire  _ life- then he would make a big spectacle of threatening to get his Senator father involved. Adora would probably have to step up and take the blame just to make sure he didn’t pin it on a custodian and cost her her job. But Adora knew that she could take the hit; apparently she had gained favor with her boss Martin when she wiped the floor with Chad’s drunk ass because her coworkers may not have liked  _ her _ , but they despised Chad even more. Possibly more than she did. Besides, Catra was smiling, her face beaming in the golden light of the city and she was laughing so joyously ( _ Adora  _ was making her laugh) as she clawed more popcorn from the bag, and no slap on the wrist or demeaning lecture could take this moment away from Adora. “But it was worth it.”  

“Oh Adora. You don’t ever change, do you?” she smiled, her canines catching her lips as she leaned back in her seat.

Adora shifted in her seat to look at Catra and grant her better access to their stolen treasure, folding her legs up. “Hey, do you remember when we used steal the good after school snacks from the top shelf of the pantry?”

“Yeah duh I remember!” Catra laughed, poking her in the knee. “That bitch hid _ everything _ good from us! Oh fuck, what were they again, the stuff we stole-” Catra started snapping her fingers and Adora stifled her giggling.

“Fruit Roll Ups!” she reminded her.

“ _ That  _ was it! God, I haven’t had a Fruit Roll Up since like, we were ten. God, do you remember we used to like deal them out to the other kids? We were  _ gods! _ ” laughed Catra.

Adora’s face was starting to ache she was smiling so big. “Weaver busted us  _ so  _ hard.”

“We only got busted because of your dumb idea to stand on top of each other’s shoulders!” Catra said, shoving Adora into the window as Adora almost choked on popcorn from her laughter.  _ Do that again,  _ Adora thought for a split second as she hit the door. Catra was being playful so it’s not like hitting the side of the car hurt, but still Adora had to wonder where that thought had even come from. “And you were so  _ fucking  _ heavy!”

“I was  _ not _ !” Adora retaliated, “And besides, it was  _ your  _ idea. I wanted to use the chair!”

“The chair was too noisy and therefore tactically inefficient. Man, I really thought Weaver was gonna skin me alive that time.” Catra’s voice fell as she finished. Adora risked a glance at the other girl and her heart caught in her stomach. After sneaking around for snacks and getting caught, Adora hadn’t gotten off easy. Mrs. Weaver separated them- they were almost never disciplined together so she could curate her manipulation to their different personalities- and took Adora out in the backward, sending Catra to their room. She could still feel the searing pain on her cheek where Mrs. Weaver hit her, hot tears streaming down her face as she mocked Adora and reprimanded her for behaving so wretchedly. And then she left Adora crying where she stood, and Adora shook as she watched the sliding glass door close, her caretaker reaching for the belt that had been left on the kitchen table from the night before. By the time the sunset that evening, Adora was still sitting limply on the plastic swing set, tracing her foot in the dirt with a withered shoe, telling herself she’d be good next time, she would be obedient and she’d be a good girl. Just like Mrs. Weaver wanted.

Long past dinner Adora mustered the courage to go back inside. She remembered faintly the other kids at dinner, their prying curious eyes following her as she declined to stay in the kitchen. “ _ She got lucky. _ ” One kid whispered, maybe Kyle or Lonnie. And that Adora would never forget.    

Because Catra had not gotten lucky. She never did. Adora found her on their bed, buried in their blue blanket and for a second Adora worried she was actually dead. Not dead, but practically catatonic. “ _ Catra?” _

_ “Go away Adora.”  _ Her voice was so weak.

It was a long night. They sat side by side on the bed, hand in hand, Catra’s head on Adora’s shoulders as she told her a story. A story about how they were going to get adopted by two families, both with a mom  _ and  _ a dad, who never ever hit them or screamed at them. They’d live in nice houses that working bathtubs and a water heater that didn’t make scary noises at night, side by side and they’d have sleepovers every day. They’d go on amazing vacations together and Catra would have a  _ real  _ cat one day, not just Whiskers, whom she clung to.

Catra never did tell Adora what Mrs. Weaver’s punishment was. But the way Catra flinched every time Adora tried to touch her, the way she hissed when Adora bumped her body, she didn’t have too.

"Catra I’m sorry,” Adora’s voice shook, “I know you probably don’t want another apology but… I knew what she was doing and I never tried to stop her.”  _ I’m sorry I wasn’t the person you needed me to be.  _ “You don’t have to forgive me.”

Letting out a long sigh, Catra sunk her seat before saying “It’s not about forgiving you Adora. Like I get it, you were just as scared as I was but I just thought I was worth it to you. to stand up to her. I mean, you always wanted to be the hero. You always acted like you were. When you left I realized I wasn’t worth it and it was like my mom all over again. But you’ve got your shit to work through and I’ve got mine, so it doesn’t even matter if I forgive you Adora. Weaver and Hordak  _ still _ did all that stuff to me.”

“Oh.” Adora swallowed.  

“We don’t have to do this tonight,” Catra’s eyes met hers, “ Cause we  _ always  _ do this is and you  _ always  _ end up crying. I’m sick of you alway ending up crying in my car, so we can just skip it. Your face gets all weird when you cry.”

_Huh._ The nervousness from earlier had returned to Catra’s voice and her eyes kept flickering her direction. “And it has nothing to do with you maybe… caring about me?” Adora couldn’t help the cockiness in that had taken over. Teasing her was kind of fun, definitely lucrative, Adora could see why Catra couldn’t resist teasing her. And it was totally worth the way Catra whirled around and shoved her into the window again.

“What? No! I don’t- I don’t care-” stuttered her driver, her eyes wild and her shoulders scrunched, “I certainly don’t  _ worry  _ about you! Are you on something? Are you drunk again? God if you’re drunk again!”

"I mean, I didn’t say anything.” Oh,  _ this  _ was a win.

“Ugh, you’re  _ infrutiating _ , Adora. You know that?” Catra growled, dragging her faux claws down her face. Part of Adora wanted to yell  _ “no, you’re infruitating!”  _ just to see where that would get her, and the other part of her was really beginning to believe she did have to a death wish. “Let’s just go back to your stupid game. Wasn’t it your turn?”

“I think it was yours.”

“Ugh, okay then. Fuck what do people even talk about these days? Oh, um what’s your favorites movie?” Catra asked pulling at one of her curls. They were stalled in traffic. Again.

Unlike Bow and Glimmer, her pop culture gurus, Adora lacked an immediate answer and had to think for a second. She was also momentarily distracted by Catra blowing her curls out her face, her brows furrowed in that cute expression again. “Uh, I like Wonder Woman?” she said after another couple of indulgent seconds of staring.

“Ha! Big surprise there! Let me guess, you also like Thor?” she snickered.

“Yeah.” Adora’s face fell, her heart falling to her stomach. “You don’t seem like someone who’d be into superhero movies, Catra.”

“Hey, sometimes the villains are hot.”  _ Yeah,  _ Adora’s thought as she took in Catra,  _ sometimes they are.  _ “I don’t see most of the movies, actually. I’m too fucking poor. And honestly I’m just surprised you didn’t say that stupid movie about that kid who got adopted…” she trailed off, waving a partially gloved hand.

“What?”      

“You used to watch it all the time and make me watch it with you! I swear to God I’m not making this up, stop making that dumb face Adora!” Catra whacked Adora in the arm as she giggled, “It had that dumb guy who wore the evil hat! The kid had glasses and was a total fucking dweeb and they played that stupid sad song at the end and you  _ always  _ cried! They went to the future-”

“Meet the Robinson’s?” gasped Adora.

“Yes! That’s it! I thought you’d still be obsessed with it cause you’re such a giant dork.” Adora rolled her eyes again, crossing her arms (whilst trying to ignore her sweating armpits, god was she  _ dying?) _ and in her playful annoyance she almost missed the tiny smile on Catra’s face. Her heart skipped a beat.  _ Who gave her the right to be this cute? _

“Yeah, well, is you movie still Lilo and Stitch?  _ In Spanish?” _ Adora asked with a shove of her own. Catra burst into chaotic laughter and Adora decided her new goal was to make Catra laugh until the end of all time. It was intoxicating. She was staring again, wasn’t she?

“Oh so you finally figured it out?” Catra cackled.

“That you  _ tricked  _ me into thinking one of our only movies at Weaver’s was in only in Spanish? Yes!”

Given their stretched financial situations as an orphanage managed by the debtor of a crime lord, Catra and Adora had little access to movies as children. While the rest of the world lived in the 21st century and used DVDs, they were stuck with three movies on tape and VCR player always on the fritz. They only had  _ The Neverending Story _ \- which Kyle broke-  _ The Wizard of Oz,  _ and  _ Lilo and Stitch,  _ thanks to Catra _.  _ Catra claimed she found the tape in the garbage at school, and no one questioned that because they were just happy to have another movie to watch that wasn’t  _ The Wizard of Oz,  _ and also it was a VHS tape, so it very much could have been in someone’s trash. Catra also claimed that the movie was  _ only  _ in Spanish. So what Adora hadn’t picked up from her friend, Catra and Rogelio translated whenever they watched.

Catra and Adora watched _ Meet the Robinsons  _ in the fourth grade, a year after Catra’s discovery of Lilo and Stitch, and Adora fell in love instantly. Then, after months of scavenging for loose dollars and spare change around town, Catra whining about wanting to go home but never leaving her side, Adora mustered up the cash to buy a copy of the movie. They still watched Lilo and Stitch as much as they did before, so much that by the time Mara exposed Weaver’s operation Adora had the whole movie memorized in a language she didn’t actually speak.

“God, me and Rogelio got you so fucking good! I can’t believe you dum dums couldn’t figure out I just changed the language from the stupid options menu the  _ first  _ day we had it and that you could’ve changed it back the whole time!” Catra practically shouted, clutching her stomach she was laughing so hard.

Adora was quickly losing herself to her own laughter. “Glimmer and Bow were so confused!” A couple years back, the gang had a movie night in good natured attempt to help Adora catch up on some of the key movies she’d missed;  _ Lilo and Stitch  _ ended up being the chosen feature and Adora couldn’t understand why in the world they picked a movie that was in Spanish. Bow came close to having an aneurysm because this was like the millionth key Disney aspect she’d completely misinterpreted, leaving Glimmer to explain that movie was actually made in  _ English _ . Adora spent the rest of the night in her room. “Thanks for making me look like an idiot, Catra!”

“Oh Adora, you’re welcome.” Catra’s laughter seemed to coming to an end, like she could breathe again. Glancing at Adora, Catra admitted in a low voice “By the way... it’s still my favorite movie. If that was gonna be your next question.”

Smiling, Adora nudged Catra again. “Thanks Catra.”

“Why are you like this?” she mumbled, that small smile reappearing on her face.

“Dunno,” she shrugged. But Adora did know the reason. The reason was staring back at her with wide, bathed in the light of their transcendent city that one of them adored and the other despised, staring at her like she’d grown a second head.

They held each other’s gaze for an infinite second and Adora could feel warmth crawling up her face. Catra then huffed and stuck her tongue out. “Okay, weirdo it’s your turn.”

“Yeah I know, I’m just trying to think of something that will get in your head.” Adora chuckled, reveling in the way Catra rolled her pretty eyes at her. Where this confidence had come from, Adora didn’t know. But she didn’t want whatever impulsivity and casual reckless Catra ignited in her to leave her, ever. Maybe Bow was hit the nail on the head about Adora’s 180 mood swing more than she let him- or herself- believe and maybe Perfuma was right, maybe the universe had given her something after all. Catra, by some exquisite happenstance, found her. She had her friend again and it was everything. “Hey, is this fate?”

“If this is fate, it’s stuck in fucking traffic.” was Catra’s deadpan response. They hadn’t moved nearly an inch in the last ten or fifteen minutes. “Weird question by the way.”

“Yeah, I know.” Adora sighed, her teeth playing with the skin of her lip. “Can I ask you another one?”

Her bewitching eyes trained on the car in front of them, Catra only shrugged. Adora took a deep, steadying breath, her fingers crushing the plastic of the popcorn bag. This is what she wanted to ask the second she opened her notebook on the steps of her apartment after wistfully watching Catra drive down her street. In truth, she’d come close to forgetting as she and Catra had laughed and threw caramel kettle corn at each other. But now the words weighed heavy on her tongue. “Why did you… why did you do those drawings for me?”

_ Here we go. _

The change in Catra’s demeanor was unmistakable. The way she shrunk into herself and moved away from Adora like she was the enemy once more, the scowl on her face and the flickering of her gaze. She didn’t want to talk about this.  _ I’m not letting you run away from this Catra! I’m not letting you run away from me! _

“It’s just, you didn’t have to do it. You didn’t even seem that interested in She-Ra and I just- I just can’t figure out,”  _ what kind of game you’re playing,  _ “why would give up time to draw her.”

“Ugh I knew you were going to be weird about this!” growled Catra, “You always make a bigger deal out of shit than you need to! It was nothing, okay? I just felt like it!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The light ahead of them turned green.

“They’re amazing, by the way. I hung them up above my desk and I look at them when I get stuck or frustrated, which is a lot. And I- I wrote you into the story. It’s funny actually. You- well you’re character- was like my missing piece. Everything I was stuck on just... clicked.” Adora decided to stop herself there. She’d exposed herself, made herself vulnerable, showed her cards. Whether Catra decided to meet her in the middle, that was not Adora’s choice to make.

That was the problem that Adora kept running into, wasn’t it? In her novel, she could make Catra do or say anything she wanted, but she chose to create a character that was a close to the real, incredible person as she could make it. A fictional Catra would interact with Adora when the actual Catra kept herself out of reach.  _ Would it be so bad to let me in,  _ Adora thought as Catra locked them in silent standoff,  _ what can I do to prove it won’t be like last  time? _

_ “Nothing.”  _ She-Ra’s Catra would tell her as she sunk her claws into the skin of her back. Adora’s Catra would probably say the same thing. So Adora resigned herself to finding her answer in Catra’s silence, to picking out kernels from the bottom of her bag, wishing so deeply that she could turn back time.

And then Catra did speak, after a painful eternity of Adora playing with popcorn seeds and wiping her sweaty palms on her pants as discreetly as possible. “Oh for fuck’s sake, you’re gonna get published aren’t you?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re gonna finish She-Ra and then you’re gonna get published, because as much as I hate to say it, you’re really  _ fucking  _ good,”  _ what is happening here? Is she having a meltdown? Isn’t that my thing?  _ “and then I’m gonna have to go through with our stupid deal,”  _ oh my God, I forgot about that, “ _ and then I’m gonna have to pay to go back to fucking school and I don’t have  _ any _ money and why does my head hurt so  _ goddamn  _ bad, Adora?”

“Catra- Catra, please calm down!” Adora shouted, grabbing Catra’s wrists and pulling her sharpened fingernails from her forehead. “This isn’t, I didn’t want this.” Catra looked up at Adora and all she could see was that beat down ten year old hiding in their bed, relying on false promises and fairytales. Closing her eyes, Adora shook her head with so much force her hair tie began to loosen.  _ I don’t want to see her like that.  _ “Listen, I only said that stuff because I thought- I thought you were really talented! But you don’t have to do anything I say, not if you don’t want to.” Catra’s grip on her hands began to loosen. “Backing out is okay and I get it if you’re sick of hanging out with me. I mean, I’ve been having a lot of fun but if you don’t want to see me I get it. We can- we can stop.”

“That’s not what I said, Adora.” Her voice was low.

“Oh. Okay, I guess.” with that, Adora let go of Catra. Watching her turn back to the road, Catra’s familiar worries about school and money echoing in her head, the words that had been caught in Adora’s throat all week surfaced before she could stop them. “Hey if you’re looking for a way to pay for school I… I think I might have any idea.”

Catra narrowed her eyes and snorted, “Adora if you say stripping I swear to God-” Adora laughed before she could stop herself.

“No, not that,” she smiled, happiness flooding her because she hadn’t torpedoed Catra into a state they couldn’t bounce back from like she thought she had, “it’s just, have you ever thought about illustrating? Maybe?”

Well that was it. The words were out. And Adora  _ immediately  _ wished she could take them back.

“What?” Catra was back to looking at her like she’d grown a second head.

“You sound pretty confident in She-Ra.” said Adora, throwing her own words from the second night back at her, “But you know, it’s a kids book and I always felt like it was missing something. You brought her to life and made me believe in her. Maybe… maybe you could do that for the readers.”

“That’s  _ if  _ she-  _ you  _ get published, remember dummy?” Catra retorted.

“Catra you were screaming that at me a couple minutes ago.”

The other girl laid her head back on the steering wheel. “Ugh.”

“If She-Ra doesn’t get picked up by a publisher, then I won’t hold you to our deal. You don’t have to go to school or pursue being a tattoo artist and I’ll-” Adora swallowed, “I’ll leave you alone. You’d lose nothing.”

“Except my time.” whined Catra from underneath her mane.

_ Even if it’s with me?  _ Adora pushed the thought as far away as possible. “But if you did like I dunno, even a few illustrations for me, and She-Ra gets picked up and actually sells, wow it’s weird to say that outloud- nevermind, then I’d split the revenue with you. It wouldn’t be a lot, but you could work on going back to school.”

“Why the hell would you do that Adora?” she sounded so tired, “It’s  _ your _ book, you should get all the money.”

“Well, it’s not like you’d take the money  _ from _ me.”

“ _ Fuck  _ no! I told you Adora, I  _ don’t _ need your help!” she practically hissed, whipping her head up to lear at her passenger, but Adora expected this and she had a plan. Perhaps spending hours with Catra in her head to put her in words had given her an edge. Maybe she could play this game of unpredictability after all.

“And I know that Catra. This way you earn the money yourself. You’re putting in the work and you’re going to get credit, well _if_ you want to do this. I’m not helping you Catra. I’m asking for _yours_.” explained Adora.

“You don’t ever give up, do you?” Catra asked. Once again, that small smile appeared on her face and Adora bit her lip.

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“Dammit,” sighed Catra, “I’ll… I’ll think about it. Okay, Princess?”

_ That’s good enough for me!  _ “Hey why don’t I get to give you a nickname?” Adora figured asking that was better than pushing her luck.

“When you were wasted you kept calling me kitty.” Adora perked up at this but Catra was right there to shoot her down, “And if you ever do it again I’ll rip your fucking arms off.”

“Okay. No nickname then.” Adora said as she crumbled the empty plastic bag into a ball, noticing with a wave of relief that her hands had stopped sweating buckets. Grabbing her backpack from off the floor to shove the plastic in, she noticed the whole bag vibrating quietly. So did Catra too, apparently.

“I really hope that’s your phone.”

That comment earned her a whack on the shoulder. “Ugh, you’re the absolute worst, Catra!” But of course Catra only stuck her tongue out as Adora pulled out her cellphone to find that Glimmer had texted her 22 consecutive times. Looks like Adora wouldn’t be met with an empty apartment after all. “Oh no.”

“What’s wrong? Did you forget to text Rainbow that you’d be late?” asked Catra.

“I’m supposed to do that?” Adora looked up from her phone for a brief second before her phone lit up again.

 _BAE (Glimmer)_ _11:58 pm_

   WHAT AM I GONNA DO ADORA?!!!!!!! I DON’T WANT TOBE A FUCKING DOCTOR!

That was the gist of most of Glimmer’s messages. “No, one of the ovens broke at the bakery and we can’t figure out how to fix it.”

Catra snorted. “How hard can fixing an oven be?”

“Harder than you think. It’s not like, a regular oven. It’s a Smart Oven.”

“The fuck is a Smart Oven?”

“It’s supposed to be super advanced in the kitchen. You can connect it to your phone and it will give you updates, etc. It’s also supposed to able to detect what it’s cooking and for how long perfectly. But it’s a prototype and not to mention,  _ very  _ expensive and we managed to break it on the first day. According to her last fourteen messages, Glimmer’s mom just found out about it and is  _ really _ upset and now so is Glimmer!” finished Adora, sinking into her seat.

“Wow.” was all Catra had to say.

Adora rubbed her eyes and sighed. “Glimmer’s worried her mom’s gonna shut down the bakery if we don’t fix this, and soon. But it’s not like we know how! I just want Glimmer to be happy because she’s basically my only family but it’s like I can never do enough…” not the early shift, or the extra shift, or anything, “I guess I’ll start looking for someone to fix it.”

“You know what, don’t do that.” Catra stopped her.

“Huh? What?”

“Those asshats online won’t be able to do anything!” she scoffed, flashing her canines, “ _ Especially  _ if it’s some fancy fucking prototype.”

“Well I don’t know what else to do!” Adora threw her hands up.

“I bet Entrapta could fix it. She’s all over that shit.” muttered Catra.

_ Entrapta! Catra you fucking genius!  _ “Really?” she practically shouted, “do you think- would she be up to helping us?”

“I dunno, could you pay her-”

_ “Yes,  _ yes we could.” Adora finished emphatically. “And if she fixes this, you and her can eat free there for the rest of your lives!”

“Uh, okay. So should I like bring her by next time she’s off?” asked Catra.

“Definitely! Please! Oh my goodness, thank you Catra,  _ thank  _ you-”

“Yeah, yeah.” Catra huffed, pushing Adora off her shoulder. Only then did Adora notice she’d grabbed the other girl and was basically shaking her. “G’off me you big blonde idiot.”

“I’m so glad you picked me up tonight.” Adora sighed, relieved beyond any measure. As her words echoed back to her, she bit her tongue. Bow and Glimmer would be so disappointed in how desperate and whipped she sounded.  _ Well they don’t know Catra like I do.  _  But even Adora knew she sounded like a loser.

But she’d gotten this far with Catra, right?

“You know, I’m actually glad too. At least you’re not fucking crying,” Catra snorted. Adora looked over and found Catra smiling at her. Catra was  _ smiling.  _ It was stunning. It was beautiful. It was soft and endearing and genuine. It was so her. And it was everything. Adora could feel her heart beating so fast it was going to explode. She was so,  _ so _ amazing and Adora was so,  _ so  _ screwed. And Catra’s next words only sealed Adora’s fate. “So since we’re gonna be here until we fucking die, you wanna tell me more about how She-Ra’s going?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so Catra and Entrapta are heading to the bakery... and we'll get to see Frosta and Sea Hawk (i know you guys are hanging on for him)  
> fun fact! rats i've heard are actually quite sweet and intelligent so they make for good pets. 
> 
> Meet the Robinson's and Lilo & Stitch are like my favorite disney movies. a lot of Adora and Catra's adventures at the orphanage are based off my time in child care which was at the ymca ;) and do not fret I wasn't abused there. we just had to get really creative because my sister and I spent summer after summer there. so I think of Catra and Adora and all the others having to get creative with what they had. I have almost all of Meet the Robinson's memorized because not only do I watch it still, but it was one of the only movies we had. They ended up being so representative of the characters themselves and what they wanted in the story in Weaver's orphanage that I was able to put a little piece of me into them.
> 
> little note: adora and catra's financial and support situations are just supposed to mirror their experiences in canon and way to explore their characters within a modern setting. it isn't really me commenting on society or making a blanket statement about people with privilege (of which I have much of). the princesses all come from families within money in the au, but that's to represent the power they have in canon, which they use for good. i wanted Adora to struggle with setting boundaries and I wanted all the characters to have strengths and weaknesses, just like they have in canon. 
> 
> I don't know. maybe I'm over thinking this. just remember I love you all and I'm so so so grateful! come visit me [princessofgayskull](<a%20href=)
> 
> please tell me what you think! I'd love to hear from you!


	7. you said you're into closure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And Catra is an old friend of Adora’s and they’ve been you know,” Bow winked a few times and even nudged Adora, “ubering together. If you know what I mean.”
> 
> “Is that like what Sea Hawk and Mermista are doing right now in the bathroom?” asked Frosta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaand we're back!!!!! thank you so much for you patience (you guys are the best). You're investment, kudos, and comments keep the story going! it's been a busy month; I went back to school and that's taking up what little energy I have. But still, I'm not giving up.
> 
> "turns around and puts on a bow tie so I look like Michael from the good place* okay, there's been a change of plans. The bakery scene was supposed to be one chapter and now... now it's more like an arc that's going to take at least two chapters. The beginning leg of the chapter was getting to be sooooo long and it had been so long since an update that I was like "oh what the heck, this seems like a good place to cut it off before we go to the next part"
> 
> that means more Adora for a little while, but we will be going back to Catra's POV right after everything goes down at the bakery. In the meantime, thanks again for your patience and love. 
> 
> disclaimer: I don't know shit about taxes (I should i'm like an adult now???) and I know very little about bakery management. There's probably a bunch of little mistakes, but they mostly exist for plot in the case I didn't catch them. 
> 
> well, you've waited long enough! Here you go!

For the first time in 13 years, Adora and Catra’s two separate and opposing worlds were set to collide again. As a result, Adora found her own emotions colliding, almost violently; her anxiety and excitement were forces to be reckoned with on their own, together they just made her want to hurl. Still, she welcomed the nervous energy inside her and the motivation that came with it.

Their previous interactions always left Adora feeling like Catra wanted to keep the line between their two lives clear and defined, guarding herself and her boundaries, stalking the perimeter to keep Adora from getting too close. The only time Catra dared even walk the fine line was when they were sitting on opposite sides of her car. Every conversation, every step in the wrong direction and every step in the right one, occurred on Catra’s turf and Catra’s turf only. Adora was trying her best to accept that this may never change and that there existed the possibility that Catra meant more to Adora than Adora meant to her, when the other woman offered to bring Entrapta over to the bakery to fix the oven. _Catra_ crossed the line and came over to Adora’s side.

 _Well, she hasn’t yet,_ Adora reminded herself as she busied herself with transerferring Glimmer’s newest batches -straight from their normal _working_ ovens- with their like pastries in the glass display, the bakery bursting with energy around her, _I guess that will be happening pretty soon._ She swallowed the urge to check her phone and instead looked out through the glass into the bakery’s foyer with an addled sigh. This isn’t what she had planned for tonight.

“Perfuma, how did you manage to spend your _entire_ surplus in less than two weeks?” from the other side of the bakery, Frosta’s high pitched voice echoed with her signature annoyance.

“Hmm,” Perfuma cupped her cheeks, studying the papers Frosta had laid out on the table, “um.. oh yes, I gave most of it to the youth shelter, they’re in _great_ need of donations and the kids down there are so sweet. We should all go see them sometime! Oh, sorry right. After that I used the rest for personal use, I guess? There was a sale on these _super_ cute little glass bottles on Etsy!”

“This receipt says you purchased fifty of them-”

Before Frosta could even finish her sentence, Adora watched Perfuma whip out one of her purchases from her crocheted purse with the brightest smile on her face. “Look! They’re so tiny! I couldn’t resist!”

Adora could also hear Glimmer and Bow from within in the kitchen over Frosta’s loud and unamused series of sighs as Perfuma tried to insist that she couldn’t resist. From what pieces of dialogue she could pick up, Adora gathered that Bow was trying to initiate a conversation with Glimmer while Glimmer gave the Smart Oven one more shot- or a few with some kicks in between- before their college friend came in to save the day.

“So I had this genius idea for a group halloween costume- Glimmer! What are you doing?” _BANG!_  “Don’t beat the oven with a _rolling pin!” BANG! “_ Stop it! _Stop,_ stop-” _BANG!_ _BANG!_ “-okay calm down-” his voice broke almost comically as Glimmer brought the fury down on the oven again “well... there goes our warranty.” Bow’s own laughter followed his quirky zinger accompanied by a furious series of expletives from their roomate.

Their antics almost, _almost,_ distracted Adora from her wild nerves.

“Hey, has anybody seen Mermista? She went to the bathroom like forty minutes ago…” Perfuma’s question pulled Adora’s attention away from the loud banging that had started back up in the kitchen.

“Interesting.” Frosta deadpanned. “that’s about the same amount of time _Sea Hawk’s_ been gone.”

 _Are you seriously kidding me?_ Adora somehow managed not to scream. It had totally gone over her head that Mermista and Sea Hawk were missing and probably grinding in her bathroom like Glimmer’s bakery was some kind of trashy college party. She shuddered at the image.

“Catra’s gonna have a fucking field day.” Adora whispered to herself as she slid down the back counter to the cold linoleum floor.

It just so happened that the night their worlds were colliding and the only night that both Entrapta _and_ Adora both had off, was the night that _all_ of Adora’s other friends also had off. Their unexpected arrival (Adora was kicking herself because she _should_ have expected it; they all flocked here when they had nothing else to do) threw Adora’s solid plan of attack completely off. Now instead of gently wading into the complexities of her chaotic social life, she and Catra were now going to have to start by jumping into the deep end.

“Ugh…” she threw her head in her hands.

Just like her roommates, Entrapta did not have any method of transportation (“Unless you want her hotwiring some white lady’s BMW,” Catra explained, her voice light and amused as if just the thought of watching Entrapta excell at petty crime was entertaining, and Adora had to admit that yeah, it definitely was, “then we gotta carpool.”) so she was relying on Catra for a ride. It took a little while for Adora to put two and two together, only clicking a few hours after Catra dropped Adora off at her apartment and she tossed and turned in her bed, overthinking every aspect of their ride that night. Adora shot up in bed so fast at her sudden realization she almost snapped her spine in half. If Entrapta needed Catra to drive her, that could only mean _Catra_ was coming to the bakery. That meant she’d be meeting Bow and Glimmer. Face to face.

And that’s when Adora’s excitement collided with panic.

Because it wasn’t like Catra to sit in the car and just _wait_ for Entrapta, not when an opportunity to tease and taunt and mercilessly- and meaninglessly- flirt with Adora was right smack in front of her, like a mouse dangled in front of a starving cat. Adora knew Catra wasn’t stupid. Adora knew that Catra was probably, and her pride hated to admit this despite her growing adoration for the other girl, _way_ smarter than she was. So this wouldn’t be one of those nights where Catra sat brooding in the dark of her car and filing her nails to a pinpoint while Entrapta tinkered with their equipment.

“Ugh! Well- well I’m not stupid either!” Adora shouted at her reflection in her bathroom mirror, a toothbrush dangling out of her mouth that didn’t exactly help her argument. Even in the early morning she was still ruminating, Catra still on her mind (That was becoming more and more common.). Spitting into the sink, Adora wiped her mouth and declared as she waved the toothbrush at her own angry image, “Catra wants to tease me? Fine! She can tease me! I mean, it’s just- it’s _just_ Bow and Glimmer. I can prepare for that. I’ll take the night off, ugh Martin’s gonna be so mad, ugh who cares? Okay, just take the night off Adora and I’ll” she gulped, visibly paling “just tell Bow and Glimmer that Catra is coming to the bakery...heh.”

But if She-Ra Adora could be a military mastermind, then real life Adora had the makings of a badass too.

And in any other case, Adora would’ve have waited until the _last_ possible minute to bring this up to them, but nothing involving Catra had gone her way so far, and she wasn’t about to start believing they were about to now. Time was also of the essence. Adora needed to tell Glimmer as soon as possible help was coming for the oven to prevent any major “Mom’s totally gonna make me go to medical school” breakdowns. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair not to tell Glimmer that Entrapta could fix their stupid machinery just because Adora was hesitant to talk about Catra with them. All the girlfriends and boyfriends and every date the three of them had ever had were talked about in great detail; nothing was off the table when it came to divulging and dishing and venting with her roomates. But something about this, about what was happening with her and Catra, Adora knew it was different and in that she found her hesitance. Catra wasn’t like any college date or perspective girlfriend Adora ever had. Catra was different. This was different.

Because for the first time in a long time, it was real.

 _Maybe they’ll just focus on Entrapta. I mean we haven’t seen her since college! They’ll have to be excited about that. Bow’s probably gonna freak out. Hopefully, hopefully! they won’t fixate on Catra._ Adora repeated to herself over and over as she stared at the TV. The three of them had all piled on their couch to watch Brooklyn 99 (“until my sorrows have drowned themselves,” Glimmer said with a mouthful of Lucky Charms). According to Bow, it had been a rather rough day for Glimmer. She’d been on and off the phone with her mother, their arguments loud enough to be heard down the block from the bakery, about the future of Glimmer’s enterprise while Adora spent an eight-to-five shift in the ladies’ bathroom at Light Spinners covering for her coworker Teresa. Adora turned and caught sight of Glimmer’s melancholic stare into her empty cereal bowl. Just the sight of her tear stained face was enough to crush Adora’s heart. _I can’t do this anymore._

“Hey so,” Adora looked down at her phone, glancing one more time at the confirmation text _Catra_ sent her only an hour prior- without any prompting for the other end, “I found someone to fix the oven.” This definitely caught their attention. A cereal bowl flew onto the carpet. There went their security deposit. “You guys remember Entrapta, right? She’s one of Catra’s roommates. Last night Catra said she could bring her over sometime to fix it.”

“ _What?!”_ Adora was in it now, and it didn’t help that at the same moment Adora dropped her bombshell, Gina Linetti just _had_ to be saying “Oh damn!” Except they didn’t pay attention to the 99th precinct of Brooklyn for the rest of the night.

But she could deal with this, Adora kept telling herself until it was practically her mantra the days leading to Catra and Entrapta’s visit. Because it was _just_ Bow and Glimmer, and that way she could lay down some ground rules and know they would respect them. “Okay, don’t talk about the orphanage or Mrs. Weaver or Hordak-”

“Who’s Hordak?”

“You mean like the bad guy in She-Ra Hordak?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Adora clarified in an octave higher than usual, adding “I’ll tell you later” when their faces fell, “just don’t talk about our past like, _at all._ If you stare she’ll like hiss at you and really, really don’t touch her. That’s probably the biggest one. She’s really big on space.”   

Glimmer and Bow both readily agreed. “Jeez Adora, you look like you’re about to type up a contract and ask Mermista to review it.”

“Don’t worry, bae! It’ll be _fine_! We promise we won’t bother her.”

“It is interesting that you’re so protective of her…”

 _“_ I am _not-_ just- ugh! Shut up Bow!” Adora couldn’t help but smile despite their teasing. There was a part of her that was actually… excited. Catra was opening up to her. She was okay with the idea of meeting Adora’s friends, taking Adora by complete surprise. Their relationship was not going to be confined to that stupid car anymore. Their relationship may not be as fleeting as Adora once thought. Maybe if Catra was open to a night like this, who know what else she might be open to?

Her sense of surety and confidence and even dumb hope all but threw itself out the window when the rest of her friends started waltzing in the Friday evening Adora and Catra managed to agree upon. Volunteering to work an extra shift to keep her mind off Catra’s impending visit, Adora tried not to chew on her nails or hair as Perfuma came in with Panera Bread for everyone (which was really nice of her but Adora knew that she was so nervous that even if she tried to eat she’d vomit and that was the _last_ thing she needed) and Frosta followed behind her, tossing her heavy school bag onto the table. They proceeded to eat together when Perfuma brought out a giant binder _seemingly_ out of nowhere and asked for Frosta’s help with her upcoming taxes. Adora must’ve been with a customer when Sea Hawk and Mermista slithered on in like the slutty snakes they were (Weren’t they _just_ fighting last Monday?). It didn’t matter anyway because neither had been seen in a good amount of time and Adora couldn’t help but wonder if Catra was going to stumble in on them in the bathroom with their tongues down each other's throats.

 Adora would _never_ live that down.

“Could somebody go check?” she stood up, her legs all wobbly, and asked Perfuma and Frosta, her voice thin. But this request was met with a blank stare from the florist and an adamant shake of the head from their resident child genius.

“I’d rather run into traffic.” said Frosta, crossing her arms. For a fleeting moment, Adora pictured throwing pastries at her friend. Instead she could only let out a strangled sigh and reached for her phone in her back pocket. Nothing. _Oh c’mon!_

As she looked at her empty inbox, Perfuma interrupted “Adora, please don’t stress it's bad for your skin! They do this all the time! They’ll probably be out soon, and _then_ you can use the bathroom. Though you might want to clean it first.” Perfuma whispered her last words behind her mouth, as if she feared Frosta would catch on to what she was alluding to.

“I hope their using protection because I am _not_ taking care of that baby.” But Frosta was 17, old enough to understand what happened between consenting twenty five year olds behind closed doors, and knew her friends just as well as any of them. Her sarcasm could level that of Catra’s. _Either Frosta’s gonna have another role model by the end of the night, or she’s pressing charges._ Adora yanked at her ponytail with shaky hands. “It’s not like you to even care what Sea Hawk and Mermista do, Adora.” Rolling her eyes at this, Adora ignored Frosta.

“Your vibe tonight is extra stressed,” nodded Perfuma, “are you using those essential oils I gave you-”

“ _No_ Perfuma! I mean- um yes, I’m using them.” Adora’s voice shook almost as much as her hands. Maybe she should’ve eaten dinner after all. It would’ve certainly helped her mood and maybe she wouldn’t be lashing out at her friends like an asshole. “On my wrist! Just like you said.” Total lie. “And- and I just don’t want Mermista and Sea Hawk wrecking our only bathroom. What if they break the baby changing station? Ha.” _Oh my God what if they do? We can’t afford to fix that! “_ Yeah... that’s it.”

Before either could respond to her odd hypoglycemic behavior, Adora slid down the counter and back onto the floor. _Why hasn’t she texted me yet?_ Adora panicked, her fingers drumming on her phone's screen. _Is she gonna… stand me up? Oh that’d be_ real _funny Catra._ Her eyes drifted to the texts they’d been sending to each other just _yesterday._ Catra was still talking to her, that had to be a good sign. But at this point they were going to be closing before Catra even let Adora know she was on her way.

Everything in Adora’s battleplan had gone completely wrong. _So much for thinking my self-insert would make some military genius._  

“There you are, Adora! I bet you’d appreciate my idea for a group Halloween costume, it’s totally _aweso-_ why are you down there?” Bow waltzed out of the kitchen to find her pouting and chewing furiously on her hair.

“Oh you know, just _panicking_ because all the planning I did was worthless!” Her voice squeaked and she whacked herself in the forehead, her wet hair falling limp on her cheek.

“Is this about Catra coming tonight?” realized Bow, crouching down to be next to her. “Girl, it’s gonna be fine, just take a deep breath.”

“You would _think_ it’s gonna be fine but uuuugh, Frosta _and_ Perfuma are here and stupid _Seamista_ is being disgusting and breaking our baby changing station-”

“Ah, ah, ah!” Bow put his hand up to stop her spiral, “Deep breath _first,_ Adora, then talking. In one, two, three, four and out one, two, three four. Okay, what were you going to say?”

Her lungs deflating from her breath, Adora started up once again, this time just a little bit more calm. “It was _just_ supposed to be you and Glimmer tonight. I wasn’t ready to introduce her to everyone else and frankly, I don’t know if Catra is ready to meet them.”

“Why’s that?”

“Bow, it took so long just for Catra to get comfortable around _me_! And we grew up together! What if Frosta is too snarky or Perfuma asks too many questions? What if Catra stumbles in on Mermista and Sea Hawk and Sea Hawk has his damn pants around his ankles? What if… what if that scares her away, Bow? I just I can’t- I can’t lose her again.” finished, Adora gazed down at her phone where no new notifications awaited her. Just a blank screen.

“I get it.” Bow nodded.

Adora’s shoulders fell, “You do?”

“You’re scared.” he shrugged. “And that’s understandable. But just because your original plan doesn’t work anymore doesn’t mean this night’s gonna be terrible. Who knows, going with the flow might work better?”

“Maybe.” Catra never seemed to go with the flow or have a plan, and she was obviously having a better time of this than Adora was. Her ability to adapt when shit hit the fan was something Adora had always been envious of. _Maybe Bow’s right. Of course Bow’s right Bow’s_ always _right._

“Why don’t you just do what you did with me and Glimmer?” asked Bow.

“What?” Adora tilted her head before it hit her, “Oh, you mean the ground rules thing?”

Bow winked and nodded, “Yeah! So that way everyone knows not to bother and touch her and all the other things you told us, and that way they know Catra and Entrapta are coming and don’t freak out when they get here.”

_If they ever get here…_

“I mean, the first step’s gotta be telling them.” _I don’t want to,_ Adora thought to herself with the emotional care of a two year old, but she never did get to voice her objection. “Hey Glimmer!” Bow shouted back to the kitchen, startling Adora and causing her to jump two inches off the floor.

“What?” _BANG!_

“Get out here! Adora needs our help!” With that, the banging immediately ceased and Glimmer flew out of the kitchen at the speed of light, giant rolling pin still spinning in hand.

“Bae! What’s wrong? What do you need?” she panted, out of breath.

Before Adora could talk, Bow beat her to it and she watched on the sidelines as her roomates begin to form a plan of their own, “So we got Catra and Entrapta coming tonight, right?”

“Yeah, I’m so excited!” Glimmer hopped a little, her floofy pink hair bouncing with her and Adora chuckled, “I can’t believe you’re actually gonna let us meet someone you _like_ , Adora. You know, since you’ve been kinda weird about the whole thing?”

“I do not _like-”_

“Hey Glimmer, you didn’t break the Smart Oven beyond repair, did you?” Bow interrupted Adora’s protests as he leaned back to look in the kitchen. But Glimmer only shrugged in response and Bow shook the shock from his expression and continued.  “Well, anyways as I was saying, you know how it was just supposed to be me, you, and Adora? Now the _whole_ squad is here. It’s code cerulean! So, Adora’s gonna lay down some ground rules with them and when Catra and Entrapta get here, you and I are gonna run interference if they bother Catra.”

“Code cerulean? Oh! That’s easy enough. Consider it done, Bae!” Glimmer said, high fiving Bow. This prompted Bow to glance down at the baking utility still in Glimmer’s grasp.

“Glimmer… you’re not gonna hit anybody with that, are you?”

“Why? Do you want me to?” Adora and Bow could only stare in response until she stood up straight, pointed the rolling pin in their direction and declared, “Only if they bother you and Catra, obviously! I could probably put somebody into a coma with this baby...”

“Please don’t, Glimmer,” Bow hung his head, but Adora couldn’t help but smile at her best friend. It would be kind of fun to see Glimmer beat the crap out of somebody with bakery equipment.

“Hey,” Glimmer looked around, hand on her hip and a scowl on her face, “I see Frosta and Perfuma but where are Sea Hawk and Mermista. Didn’t they eat dinner with us? I thought they were just here.”

“Bathroom.” “Making out.” Bow and Adora’s disdainful replies were instantaneous.

“Gross!”

Adora startled when Bow reached his hand out for her. “So what do you say? You good with this plan?”

“Yeah.” she took his hand, her panic subsiding, “Let’s do it.”

“Ah yeah, Best Friend Squad!” cheered Bow as he looped his other arm through Glimmer’s.

“I’d uh, advise against calling us that when Catra’s here.” gulped Adora. In her mind, Adora could practically here the loud cackling from Catra. Needless to say it made her uncomfortable- in more ways than one. _Damn her stupid sexy laugh._

“Why?” Bow asked, then gasped before Adora could explain, “Are you _embarrassed_ of us Adora?”

Glimmer had an equally absurd revelation at the same time, “Oh my God are we _lame?”_

“Just- focus guys! The plan, remember?”

Somehow Adora managed to pull them back right before they dove into the deep end (and she thought _she_ was the one losing it tonight) and put them on the right track as they approached Frosta and Perfuma’s table still arm and arm like the dumb Wizard of Oz quartet.

“So… am I gonna get a refund this year??” Perfuma was asking, her voice hopeful.

But Frosta had _that_ look on her face. “Actually, I think you may be getting audited.”

“Cheese and crackers! This is because Mercury is in retrograde, isn’t it?” sighed Perfuma as she slumped onto the table. _There goes her can-do universe attitude._

“Science doesn’t support that in any way, Perfuma. But don’t worry, I’ll help you if they do.” Frosta patted her shoulder as she caught sight of Bow dragging Adora and Glimmer forward with gusto, “Why are you guys linked together like Dorothy and the robot and furry from the Wizard of Oz?”

_That’s what I was thinking! God, I hate that movie._

“Did you just call the Cowardly Lion… a furry?” shuddered Glimmer, her voice breaking like Bow’s at that last hethaness word. In fact, just the insinuation of such prompted Bow to let go of them immediately so he could swallow what Adora could only assume was bile.  

“Isn’t that what he is?” Frosta asked like it was a genuine question.

“I always thought he was _part_ lion and that makes it so he couldn’t be a furry.” Perfuma wondered out loud.

This wasn’t good enough for Frosta. “Well there’s no concrete proof he’s _not_ just dressing up like that everyday.”

“Damn she’s totally right-”

“Can we argue about this later?” Glimmer threw up her hands, “We actually have something we want to talk to you about and it’s _kind of_ important so is there any chance we could table this meaningless conversation until some other time?”

Glimmer’s show of frustration was enough to get Perfuma to agree and Frosta to stop questioning the nature of furries in Hollywood, and this meant Adora was able to take over. “Listen guys, I found someone to fix the oven and she’s kind of… coming tonight.”

“Oh that’s such great news, Adora! You’re gonna save the bakery!” Perfuma clasped her hands together, “Who did you find?”

“Entrapta.”

“ENTRAPTA?” Perfuma launched herself up with so much force that all of Frosta’s neatly laid out papers went flying, earning a yell of protest from the younger girl. Perfuma grabbed Adora by her apron and yanked her closer. _Jesus, she’s strong!_  “How did you find her? After college she just- disappeared!”

Adora swallowed, still staring into Perfuma’s deep brown eyes. “Um, she’s Catra’s roommate.”

Gasping, Perfuma let go of Adora and sent her stumbling back into Glimmer. “Yeah we’ve been meaning to ask you,” Bow said from behind her, “how did that even end up happening? Like how did they meet? They’re not exactly, eh… very alike.”

“They uh, they both worked at Megamart together.” Adora rubbed her arm, familiar discomfort flooding her veins. _Here come more questions..._

“She went to work at Megamart?” Perfuma clutched her hand to her chest, as if the idea of Entrapta working for the pinnacle of capitalism was the most heartbreaking thing she’d ever heard.

“Yeah,” shrugged Adora, _at least they’re not focusing on Catra,_  “actually I think she’s _still_ working there.”

“That’s seems like kind of a waste. I mean, Entrapta is like a powerhouse when it comes to technology and computers. Like for all we know, she could be the next Bill Gates!” Glimmer pointed out.

“That guy’s a complete jerk,” Frostra mumbled, intercepting Glimmer’s thought.

“Yeah Frosta, we _know._ He ruined your family’s vacation to the Alps, so you’ve told us. As I was trying to say, why is Entrapta bagging groceries when she could be catfishing Russian trolls?”

_Well we don’t not know if she’s doing that._

“I think she’s just working as tech support,” Adora corrected, “but these are exactly the kind of questions I don’t think are a good idea to ask when they get here! I know you want to catch up with Entrapta- and you can! Just, give them some space… you know, if they need it.”

 _Looks like_ I’m _the total jerk,_ Adora thought as Perfuma’s face fell and she started fiddling with the ends of her hair. In all this time since college, Adora had forgotten that Perfuma and Entrapta had an odd, but still close relationship and that Perfuma, along with Bow, was genuinely rattled by her expulsion. Entrapta struggled to keep in contact with them- and it was now only just occuring to Adora that her search for a new job and living arrangements _might_ have had something to do with that- from a trickle of messages and texts until the well had seemingly run dry, and then, there was nothing from Entrapta ever again. She went completely off the grid just as Catra had done. With her skill, it probably didn’t take much work. Adora of all people had no right to be short with Perfuma for wanting her previous connection reestablished.

“I’m confused,” Frosta started, casting brusque glances at the four of them, “who even are these people?”

“Entrapta was my roomate in college before Mermista.” Perfuma turned around to tell her with a smile. Adora had a good feeling that Frosta would be subjected to stories of Entrapta and Perfuma’s (with Bow making appearances of course) wild adventures in their dorm all night long.

“And Catra is an old friend of Adora’s and they’ve been you know,” Bow winked a few times and even nudged Adora, “ _ubering_ together. If you know what I mean.”

“Is that like what Sea Hawk and Mermista are doing right now in the bathroom?” asked Frosta, turning the childlike innocence up to an eleven. She even tilted her head just the slightest and blinked her sparkling blues eyes, like she was just begging for Adora to reach over and punch a minor.

“Um-”

“NO!” Adora screamed before clamping her hands over her mouth. She was met with wide eyed stares. _Oh great._ They were heading quickly for a repeat of the same conversation they had a couple days ago and Adora didn’t think they had time for that. Catra could be here any second! Shutting this down was now Adora’s number one priority, even before laying down her ground rules; if Catra and Entrapta walked in to find Adora sobbing as she told the story of their time in foster care together and the weird acquaintance/friend thing they had going on now, Catra would turn around and walk right back out. _She gets all grouchy when I cry and I don’t get it!_ “Okay, look. Catra and I- well, there’s- there isn’t a Catra and me. She barely wants to be my _friend_ .” Adora sighed before continuing, they didn’t have the time to unpack all of that, “But she is doing us a favor bringing Entrapta here to fix the oven and I don’t- I don’t want you guys to get on her bad side. Because trust me, it’s a _lot_ easier than you’d think. And you’ll regret making her upset in anyway.” _You guys don’t even know the half of that._

“What will we regret?” The mood couldn’t even have shifted more if it had wanted to at the sound of Mermista’s voice. It was an 180 flip from sad and gripping tension to complete and utter shock as they all flew around to stare at their friend. Of course Mermista just stood there, looking less interested in the conversation and more what was happening on her phone as she scrolled through it with her perfect nails.

Glimmer was the first to ask the obvious. “Um, how long have you been standing there?”

“Just like, a few seconds.” Mermista shrugged. Frosta beat out everyone else with an even more obvious question.

“Where’s Sea Hawk?” she demanded like the bad cop in an interrogation, “And why is your braid still neat and your lipstick perfect?”

“Okay I don’t know what _that_ means,” Mermista narrowed her eyes, “but last I heard from Sea Hawk he said he was going out to his car to get something for I dunno? He started singing so I kinda zoned out.”

“Wait, so where have you been all this time?” asked Bow.

“The bathroom.”

“For forty minutes?” Glimmer stammered, her jaw dropping “ _Without_ Sea Hawk?”

“Yeah, I was on the phone with my dad. The bathroom’s the only place in here where I can get a good signal, but then _somebody,”_ she turned to glare at Adora, “started screaming. Like I said, I don’t know where Sea Hawk is, but he didn’t come _with_ me to the bathroom! Believe it or not we have more dignity than making out in some public restroom.”

Glimmer and Frosta exchanged a look that rang of a sarcastic _sure._ Adora put her hands on her hips, her frustration growing almost exponentially. Why, of all nights, was this even happening? God she wished she had eaten something. “So wait, where is Sea Hawk _now_?”

“Well I think he said something about the Smart Oven? That’s probably why he went out to his car, to like get something that would help fix it.” said Mermista. With that, she went back to her scrolling through her phone.

“Wait he’s trying to fix the oven?” asked Glimmer in nervous desperation for clarification. Mermista nodded and that was enough to cue a full on meltdown from both Glimmer and Adora.

 _Entrapta’s not going to even have an oven to fix! How am I supposed to explain that? Sorry Catra, we_ don’t _have an oven for you to fix and we’re_ not _going to pay Entrapta but thank you so much for driving all the way here!_ Adora drug her hands down the skin of her face while Glimmer began to pace in a tight circle. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God I’m gonna have to go to _fucking_ med school! Oh God, _God damnit_ Sea Hawk _-”_

“Guys, calm down.” Mermista, her voice dry and unworried, stopped them just as Adora was about to start chewing on her hair again, “He _is_ an engineer. He’s fixed tons of stuff for me, so…”

“That’s a good point, Mermista. Let’s all just try and relax-” But Bow’s common sense option was defeated by a heavy margin with Perfuma’s next concerned question.

“Um, do you guys smell something burning?”

_Shit!_

They all cast worried glances at each other as the faint, familiar scent of embers that followed Sea Hawk hit each of them. Then, they heard singing.

“OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GOD!” Glimmer sprinted back to the kitchen so fast they almost didn’t even see her move.

Bow let out a deep breath as they stood in her wake, scratching the back of his neck. “Is it really a good idea to let her go in there with that _steel_ rolling pin?”

“Probably not.” Frosta shook her head. Perfuma nodded in solemn agreement.

Putting her head into her hands, Adora mumbled into her already sweaty palms. “Oh God... I don’t have any idea how I’m gonna explain this to Catra.”

“Explain what?” asked Mermista.

“WHAT ARE YOU _DOING_?” Glimmer’s shrieks at Sea Hawk were loud enough to have broken their windows, her voice guttural and angry as if she hadn’t been beating the same exact oven with a steel rolling pin less than ten minutes prior. It sounded like Sea Hawk started to explain but was cut short, by what Adora couldn’t tell. But now it kinda sounded like Glimmer was strangling him.

“That!” Adora shouted, gesturing wildly to the kitchen. “Sea Hawk and Glimmer breaking the oven Catra’s bringing Entrapta over to fix! _Where_ am I even supposed to begin? I haven’t eaten, I’ve barely slept, cause I’m worried Catra’s gonna run out of my life again because everything is so _weird_ tonight but it’s always like this and I’m afraid it will be too much for her, and it’s all my fault cause I didn’t even tell you guys she was coming!” _What good am I if I can’t even keep the people I love in my life in the loop?_

“Woah.” Mermista’s jaw dropped and Adora couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Girl, all you had to do was say Catra was coming and we would have offered to help.”

“Yeah Adora, anything you need.” added Perfuma.

“We can behave, believe it or not.” Frosta nodded, “Well, the rest of us, I don’t about Sea Hawk.”

“Leave Sea Hawk to me.” Mermista flashed Adora a knowing smile, enough to calm her racing nerves. If anyone could rule the ruly wannabe pirate, it was his no nonsense not girlfriend.

Adora’s eyes fell to the floor, thinking back to how Bow and Glimmer rallied behind her without even so much as a moment’s hesitation. Of course the others would come to her aid. Ugh, why was she always so paranoid? Why did she always have to overthink and prepare for the worst when the worst almost never happened? “Thanks guys. It-” she took a shaky breath, “it means a lot.”

“And don’t worry Adora,” Bow stepped in, “you got me and Glimmer to run interference. Once we pry Glimmer away from Sea Hawk’s cold body, of course.” Bow laughed in an octave higher than normal after Adora glared at him. “Uh, how about those ground rules, Adora? About not bothering Catra and all?”

“Oh right. Listen, I just wanted to prepare you all for, you know, Catra. She can be really, really sweet when you get to know her but it takes her awhile to warm up to people. Like, _years._ I think it’s a good idea just for give her some space right now.”

Bow nudged her again just a little and winked, “And leave the up close and personal to Adora, if you know what I mean-”

“Bow!” Adora was milliseconds away from whacking him in the midriff when someone else caught them by surprise.

“Someone’s getting up close and personal with you princess?” _Ooooooh nooooooo._

Princess. The world traveled up her spine and practically melted her brain, if it weren’t already fried from hearing the sound of Catra’s voice _behind_ her out of nowhere. They all whipped around, Bow exclaiming “why does this _keep_ happening to us?” and Adora found Catra standing right behind her, her arms crossed and nose twitching, a smile coming over her face as Adora eyes widened in shock.

“That’s _Catra?_ ” whispered Frosta.

“Holy shit, Adora.” Mermista snickered.

Catra busied herself with looking around while the others caught their breath. _She’s here? Why didn’t she- ugh! Catra! She can’t handle not messing with me for two goddamn seconds!_ “God it’s like a fucking pride parade threw up in here.” she said, flexing those claw like nails.

It was all Adora could do not to strangle the satisfied look of Catra’s face (and _why_ was she so turned on by that thought?). Bow winced at the insult of their shared business, and Perfuma threw her hands over Frosta’s ears. Right, cursing. Mermista just kept laughing.

“Catra!” seethed Adora. God why did she have to do the whole leather jacket get up tonight? It’s like she knew it would be a perfect way to get in Adora’s head, to throw her off her game. Out of the car and in the flourescent light of the bakery she looked different (Still really fucking hot, but different). Catra was still dressed in her usual black jacket and gloves, but now Adora could take in the sight of her in a fraying red tank top riding up her stomach, the holes that seemed they were ripped deliberately decorating the black jeans that were adorned by a belt slung across without care and hugging the bones of her hips. Was she _trying_ to kill Adora? Swallowing, Adora got her eyes away from Catra’s stupid sexy outfit and her brain working long enough to remember what she was trying to say, “You _said_ you’d text me when you were here!”

“I did?” her face perked up in confusion, revealing her sharp incisors and Adora’s mouth went dry. But she managed to at least keep up the front that she was still upset at Catra and that this feeling wasn’t at all moved by the other woman’s stupid striking outfit and dumb sexy curls cascading down her shoulder, by nodding with as much fury as possible.

“Oh yeah. I vaguely remember that.” Catra shrugged and pulled out her phone. After a few seconds of her nails tapping on her screen, Adora trying to ignore the stares of her friends that she could practically _feel,_ Adora’s own phone buzzed in her pocket and she didn’t even have to pull it out to know _exactly_ what it was gonna say.

_Catra  J 8:27 pm_

    “hey adora.”

“You’re insufferable.” Adora said, biting her lip. The words dripped with another type of connotation.

“Hey,” she shrugged, “you’re the one that wanted me here.”

Rolling her eyes, Adora put her hand on her hip. “So, where’s Entrapta?”

“Destroying my car.” Catra let out an annoyed sigh and gestured with her gloved hand towards the door. “She said something about, I dunno, getting her stuff. S’why we were so damn late. I’m actually worried she’s going to scrap my car for parts.”

“You mean, _Marshmallow’s_ car?” asked Adora, raising an eyebrow.

Catra scoffed, a grin slowly growing on her face like she was about to attack, but Perfuma interrupted their standoff.

“Entrapta’s outside?” She was beaming like a ray of sunshine as she practically launched herself out of her chair, whacking a fuming Frosta in the process. “I’m gonna go see if she needs any help!”

“Oh, me too! I bet she needs lots of help!” But Bow’s childlike excitement and attempt to follow the blur that was Perfuma out the door was cut short when Adora sent him an S.O.S look. _Please don’t leave me!_ He sighed, rubbing his neck and walked the strides he’d made back.

“Hey Catra, how ya doing?”

Catra cocked her head at the sight of Bow’s extended hand. “Nice to see you again, cactus boxers.” There was no malice in her voice - actually, she was being kind of playful- but still Adora winced in apprehension.

“Well technically the correct plural form of cactus is _cacti-_ you know what, that doesn’t matter,” Bow squeaked when Adora sent him another look. “Welcome to The Rebellion, Catra.”

“The Rebellion?” Catra’s eyes narrowed, “Like in She-”

“It’s the name of the bakery.” Adora cut her off, stepping in front of Bow.

That loppy, knowing grin of hers had shown back on her face and Adora’s stomach suddenly felt hot. Not that _that_ feeling was anywhere new. “Hmm, that’s kind of a weird name for a bakery, you know.”

“Glimmer really likes Star Wars.” explained Bow from over Adora’s shoulders.

“Yeah, that checks out.” Catra nodded, taking another look around as she walked around Adora. “So where is Princess Glitter anyway?”

The heat that had taken home in her stomach spread through her body in an instant, Catra’s words sparking some unknown fury at the thought of her friend calling someone else Princess. _I thought that was_ my _nickname._ Adora then realized her hands were in locked in fists behind her back. When had that happened? _Am I… jealous? No! No, of course not!_

Adora was never one to be possessive. Protective, yes, but outright avaricious to be someone’s one and only, to have those split eyes on her and her only? Never. So why did this thought have her completely unraveling?

Bow brought her back down to reality, and as he spoke, Adora’s hands relaxed. “I think she’s in the-”

“And stay _out_ of the kitchen from now on!” screamed Glimmer and before they knew what exactly to expect, Glimmer was dragging Sea Hawk by the collar of his ‘Han Shot First’ tee through the bakery, his legs following behind him. The sight of a 4’9” girl using only one hand to haul a guy- known for flashing his muscles to try and get his pseudo girlfriend’s attention- who topped off at 6’4”, his limbs at his side just as limp as his mustache, was almost so wild that Adora wondered if this was a terrible mixture of daydream and nightmare.

“Uh-” Catra started and Adora winced, ready for her to declare this whole charade some sort of clown circus and turn on the heel of her steel toed boots out the door. But she never got there.

“I believe _this_ one is yours!” Glimmer swung Sea Hawk’s legs at Mermista, the glossy floor helping propel him forward in an arc like motion. “Yeet!” she proclaimed as she let go, letting physics take over and Sea Hawk took his not girlfriend’s legs out like they were bowling pins.

“Ow!”

“Son of a _bitch!_ ”

“Hey Glimmer,” Adora’s flat voice faltered just a little when she caught her roommate’s attention, “Catra’s here.”

“Oh. Oh! _OH!”_ Glimmer’s eyes grew wider with every word and she stepped away from Sea Hawk and Mermista trying to untangle their limbs from each other. “Hi Catra! It’s nice to meet you. Finally!” she winked and held her hand out, but again Catra just looked at her extension of friendship with nothing but boredom.

Nudging Catra, Adora’s eyes tore into her split ones. “So Catra, you know Bow. This is my other roommate-”

“Sparkles, I assume?” Catra crossed her arms, a dangerous smile on her face.

 _Oooooof course._ Adora had worried about Catra and Glimmer meeting since she’d realized they’d be meeting. It was, by far, the interaction Adora harbored the most anxiety about (and with Sea Hawk now in the room _that_ was saying something). Because Catra’s prideful anger clashing with Glimmer’s angry pride was like unstoppable force meets immovable object.

“Uh, it’s um _Glimmer._ ” she replied in a strained tone, “But I can understand the confusion.”

She then sent Adora a look that read _“seriously? This one? Of_ all _women?”_

And now they were at a standoff. “Play nice.” Adora hissed in Catra’s ears.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s exactly what _you_ want.” her voice hot of her neck, Catra hissed back. Adora swallowed the primal feeling in her throat, whacking Catra in the arm instead of replying (because she was genuinely afraid of what she might say lest she open her big dumb mouth). Catra just rolled her eyes and tried again. “It’s nice to meet you _Glimmer.”_

“Trust me, the pleasure is all mine.” Catra and Adora’s previous little game of ‘who can say the innuendo that will drive the other the most crazy’ had not gone unnoticed, and this was all it took for Glimmer to be back on board with Catra. Gone was the passive-aggressive malice, replaced by genuine politeness. And now, to top it all off, Glimmer was not-so-subtly winking at Adora.

Adora hoped her expression portrayed “cut that out or I’ll tell Angella I think it’s a _fantastic_ idea for you to go to medical school.” Glimmer coughed, made another face, and turned back to Catra.

“Can I get you something to eat? I was planning to send you and Entrapta home with leftovers as an additional thank you, you know besides the paycheck. But if you’re gonna be here for a while maybe I can get you something?”

“Um, sure… I guess?” Catra glanced from her to Adora, who just shrugged.

“Great! I’ll get right on that!” said Glimmer, clapping her hands together. “So I guess, just send Entrapta to the kitchen when Perfuma and Bow finish mauling her?”

“I’m sure Entrapta’d fucking loving that.” Catra chuckled, leaning slightly on the table. Over by Frosta, Bow clapped his hands over her ears.

“Would you guys cut that out?” Frosta practically screamed, given that she couldn’t even hear her own muffled words.

Catra’s nose twitched again as she caught sight of Frosta sitting opposite of where stood, leaning into her punk villain aesthetic that Adora could not, for the life of her, tear her eyes away from. She knew it was kind of out of line to stare- instead she just told herself she was looking for the elusive belly button ring Bow spoke of- but she couldn’t resist staring at Catra’s exposed skin, her belt riding down and pulling on her hips that looked so sharp they could cut glass.

_I’d like them to cut me-STOP! JESUS ADORA! HORNY MUCH? God, I’m starting to sound like Mermista trying to seduce Sea Hawk. Or vice versa… ugh._

Yet still Adora found her eyes falling back to the same place.

Frosta managed to throw Bow off of her ears and Catra snorted. “You guys hang out with a twelve year old?”

“Huh?” Adora was snapped back into reality only to met by Catra’s shitfaced grin.

“I’m 17! God why does everyone think that?” griped Frosta.

“Not _everyone_ says that, Frosta.” Adora replied, now that much needed oxygen was returning to her brain.

“ _You_ said that when you first met me Adora.” And this little comment had Catra cackling and whacking Adora with her bony elbows. Guess she hadn’t grown out that feature, or out of jumping at every chance she could to bruise Adora with them. On the floor Sea Hawk let out a guffaw, right up until Mermista whacked him in the chest and demanded he get off of her (as if they hadn’t spent the last five minutes conspiring down there) because the floor was “disgusting!”

“To be fair, you are kind of… short.” Adora said the last word as quietly as possible.

“Well,” Frosta smacked her hand on the table, Sea Hawk and Mermista struggling behind her to get up, “to be fair Adora, you’re kind of blind!”

“Jesus.” Catra snorted.

“Okay so this is Frosta,” Adora sighed and gestured to the angry bouncing bob of blue hair, “Frosta, this is Catra.”

“Yeah, I know. I was able to conclude that from the way you’re staring at her-”

Oh, this was _war._  

“Frosta is the privileged daughter of a Fortune 500 CEO. Out of all of us, she has the largest inheritance, the highest IQ and has a castle sized mansion on like 300 acres of land in Snow City, Canada and yet it still isn’t enough to fit her spoiled bratty personality!”

Somewhere- _still_ on the floor- Sea Hawk cheered “Damn!”

Bow put his head in his hands. “Is it too late to go see what Perfuma and Entrapta are doing?”

Hands on her hips and not backing down, Frosta started again. “Adora, you look tired. You’re not running yourself dry working two jobs, one of which where no one likes you, just so you can go home and chase after someone so out of your league it’s almost laughable-”

“Frosta,” Mermista managed to pull herself up from off the floor and her not boyfriend right as Adora was rolling up her sleeves, “she can bench press like three of you and grew up in a corrupt as a hell orphanage, so she probably knows of how to dispose of bodies. Quit while you’re ahead.”

Even though Adora could tell by the look on her face that she had about ten more roasts catered to Adora’s insecurities regarding Catra, one look from Mermista and Frosta slumped in her seat. Adora turned to Catra, chewing on her lip. “Sorry about, well that.” She took in Catra’s amused expression, which morphed into surprise at this sudden apology. There didn’t appear to be any signs of discomfort in her expression and body language. Adora still braced herself for the worst. The worst being Frosta basically exposed her blooming crush for Catra _in front_ of Catra and the rest of the bakery and Catra proceeding to tease her mercilessly about. If Adora’s blatant displays enough weren’t too Bright Moon for her and she called it quits.

Jesus, was she really that see through?

“Dude, why are you apologizing? I totally would have had your back if you beat up that little kid.”

Adora rolled her eyes and held back a smile. Not an exemplary compliment considering it was about her beating up someone almost eight years younger than her, but she’d take what she could get. Her cheeks felt hot. Oh crap, was she blushing?

If she was blushing at that, Catra’s next words pretty much set her on fire. (They set _everything_ on fire). “Okay so now I’m curious. How much _can_ you bench, Princess?”

It took every ounce of sensible lesbian energy (Bow would argue there wasn’t a lot of that in her to begin with) in her not to get on her knees and ask for Catra’s hand in marriage, Luckily Adora’s salvation happened to walk in the door, the jingle of the glass door’s silver bell alerting them all as Adora stuttered trying to remember what the _actual_ number was, because how stupid of her what it have been for her to lean on the table, wink and go “Well actually I can bench _four_ Frosta’s.”

Who’s to say that was even accurate?

“And this is Glimmer’s bakery! She coordinates with my shop all the time!” Perfuma was saying. Adora looked behind her to see her dragging a discombobulated Entrapta through the entrance.

“Fascinating! And does Glimmer also use Apple Pay for her transactions? Because as I was saying before there is significant evidence that the algorithms employed by Apple are rather unstable and quite easily hacked.” Entrapta stopped to take in the bakery and Adora got her first look at Entrapta in almost three years. It was Entrapta, no questioning that. The massive length of purple hair that fell to her waist back when they all dormed together now looked like it would fall to the backs of her knees was thrown up haphazardly into two wild pigtails, held in place by mismatched scrunchies that quite contrasted her greasy welding mask. The white apron she wore was more stained than not. Underneath it, her brown uggs popped out. The whole getup screamed MegaMart. She also had a massive duffel bag thrown over her shoulder with several Vocaloid patches and pins, and two charred black gloves, one that looked like a straight up oven mitt, were on her hands. Adora swallowed when she noticed that Entrapta was also holding in her oven mitt a rusty crowbar.

Leaning over to Catra she whispered, “Um, is Entrapta- is she gonna fix my oven with a crowbar?”

“The crowbar was for _something else_ on the way here, Princess.” Catra crossed her arms and winked. Adora’s heart started racing. “I’m kidding Adora! God, it’s so freaking easy to mess with you! It’s just part of her “equipment” _duh-_ she carries it everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Yeah, I have a bruise on my shoulder from where she whacked me with the damn thing this morning.” Catra rolled her eyes and Adora bit her lip to keep from laughing. She had to admit the image of Entrapta decimating Catra with a crowbar out of the blue and the ensuing rage and cursing meltdown that had surely followed was pretty hilarious.

 _Hey… that gives me an idea._ If only Adora had her notebook.

“Entrapta!” Bow shouted, running up to her with the bursting excitement of a child meeting Santa Claus. Picking her up and squeezing her so hard her eyeballs practically popped out of her head, Bow exclaimed “It’s _so_ good to see you! _So_ much has happened since you dropped out! You have to tell me everything! Don’t leave out a single detail, okay?”

Bow thankfully let her go before Adora could order him to- she didn’t exactly look comfortable being squeezed to death and was starting to squirm- and she managed to reorient herself as she repositioned her goggles. “How interesting, Perfuma made a very similar comment when she ambushed me at the car.” Perfuma let out a small laughed and looked toward the floor. “The odds of saying something word for word by two different people is infinitesimal…”

“Or it just means we missed you.” Mermista suggested and Entrapta bounced on her heels at the sight of her and Sea Hawk.

“Hello Mermista! And mustached stranger who set our dormitory on fire multiple times to get Mermista’s attention, you’re here too!”

Again, Catra leaned in and whispered, “What the hell is she talking about? Did you go to college or Burning Man?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Adora just shrugged. It had completely escaped Adora’s memory just how many fire drills she had the year Sea Hawk transferred to Bright Moon University to follow Mermista. That was also the year Madame Razz had passed, so obviously it was a blur of panic attacks, cookies-n-cream ice cream, bad grades, and marathons of _Friends_ and _That’s 70s Show_ while her leg healed and she contemplated dropping out. Sea Hawk ended up rooming with Bow, but they spent so much time in the girl’s dormitory anyway that they practically lived there, especially when Adora became too depressed to even get out of bed and Bow slept on her and Glimmer’s floor for weeks on end just so they could both be there for her. That left Sea Hawk unattended to. He set about fifteen too many fires- and that was a lot even for a STEM major- and eventually, everyone got tired of getting up at three in the morning because he’d set the microwave on fire for the fifth time that _month_ that Mermista had no choice but to banish Sea Hawk from the premises lest he face expulsion _._ Still, the fires were not an unknown occurrence after her ironclad ruling. Adora could remember telling Bow and Glimmer to go without her one night and just leave her to the burning building.

Glimmer didn’t take that for a single second, and the next day her mother was there threatening to pay for model psychiatric care if she didn’t take a freaking shower.

And that worked in getting her out of bed, surprisingly.

“Adora!” Entrapta apparently heard her and Catra whispering and shuffled over in her boots.

“Hey Entrapta, thank you _so_ much for coming! I seriously can’t stress that enough-”

“Of course! I was very intrigued when Catra said Smart Oven. That product is so rare and so exquisite! Did you know that only forty four of them have even been produced! What a fascinating piece of machinery, I couldn’t resist!” she said all in the same breath. After inhaling again she added, “Oh and Catra told me I didn’t have a choice.”

Catra’s next threat was a growl. “ _Trapta…”_

“Oh! Oh right! We agreed not to speak about your relationship with Adora.” Entrapta’s voice echoed loudly of the tile floor and Catra threw her head in her hand, her turn to be humiliated and embarrassed. Adora was sympathetic and was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to reassure Catra that she didn’t have to be, but there was also a part of her that wanted to know _exactly_ what Entrapta meant. Was this a victory? Was it bad that she so desperately wanted it to be? Bow nudged Adora and flexed his eyebrows all excited, but Adora’s brain was too fried to muster up a sassy response. Besides, she didn’t want Catra to get the wrong idea and see her as cruel in regards to her feelings. “Whoops. I think I revealed too much.”

“Entrapta, they need you in the fucking kitchen-” Bow and Sea Hawk clapped their hands over Frosta’s ears as Catra gestured toward the over end of the bakery. “go, _now.”_

“I’ll take you Entrapta!” Bow stepped away from a furious Frosta to offer his arm and Entrapta took it with a wide grin on her face. It seemed she was used to Catra’s violent demands and deflection and they only bounced right off her good mood.

“Do you want to see my newest recorder? I bought it from MegaMart but it’s undergone some _personal_ upgrades.”

“Uh, you know I do, girl!”

“Fucking finally.” Catra mumbled to herself.

Adora bumped her hip. “Hey, you still with me?”

“Yeah I guess so- stop smiling like that Adora!”

 _You’re the reason I’m smiling, you idiot!_ But Adora kept that thought for herself. God, Catra was really cute when she was flustered. And just being with her was, Adora didn’t really know how to describe the comfort she felt at Catra’s side, but in a way, it was healing. Maybe it was too soon to say anything or make any sort of assumptions, but this was nice. To have her by her side again.

Little did Adora know that Perfuma and the rest of the gang had been standing on the edges watching and waiting for the right moment to intercept. Frosta sat in her same seat looking rather uninterested. Off to the side, Sea Hawk and Mermista were whispering, attempting to be apart of the background as much as they could manage while still having front seats. Perfuma had bouncing on her heels as Catra and Adora spoke and Entrapta went off with Bow and now they were all at a stand still.

“Hi! You must be Catra!” She stepped forward, breaking Catra and Adora apart. “Adora’s told us about you and it’s so great to finally meet you!” Before anyone could stop Perfuma’s excitement she had grabbed Catra by the arm and pulled her forward with brute strength alone.

“Uhhhh…” squirmed Catra and Adora thought for a second she’d have to pull Catra back from slashing the florist’s throat, but she stayed put. “It’s nice to meet you, whoever you are.” she squeaked, throwing a look back at Adora.

Adora shot her own look at Perfuma, who’s eyes widened in shock and she released Catra from her death grip. Catra practically hissed upon being let go, taking a few steps back to where Adora stood. “Don’t be so freaking dramatic.” She told Catra in a low whisper. This made Catra’s lip curl up and Adora caught sight of her sharpened canines. “That’s just Perfuma, okay Catra? She went to college with us-”

“Yeah, I definitely got _that_ much.”

“-And she owns a floral shop down the street. She helps the bakery out a ton.” Adora finished with an eye-roll. “You already met Frosta,” Catra just cackled at that, “over there is Mermista. We also met in college when she was our RA.”

“Hey.” Mermista gave a bored wave.

“Right now she’s in law school. That’s her on and off boyfriend I guess, Sea Hawk-”

With a swing in his step, Sea Hawk full on shoved Mermista to the side and step forward to turn on the charm for Catra. “The lovely Catra! Mermista has told me much about your adventures in reuniting with Adora!”

“Why are you talking like it’s the fucking Pirates of the Caribbean?” Mermista and Sea Hawk each put one hand over Frosta’s years and she growled. Catra continued studying Sea Hawk. “It’s kinda like the only thing you’re missing is a fucking eye patch to match your weird swashbuckling thing- _YOU!”_ Catra’s split eyes lit up in recognition as well as fury. Moving at the speed of light, she grabbed Sea Hawk by his shirt, yanking him with her death grip. “It was you! You _stole_ my fucking aux cord!”

Sea Hawk just stood there sputtering and suddenly sweating like a leaky faucet.

“Um Catra-” Adora stepped forward but Catra wasn’t done.

“Give it back you little pirate bitch!”

“I uh- don’t have it, I believe I actually may have lost it...” Sea Hawk winced. He was holding his head back like he was ready to be bitch slapped, the same look he wore when Glimmer dragged him out of her kitchen single handedly.

“Oh come on!”

Adora put her hands on her hips. “Catra! Drop him!”

A strained silence fell over them as Catra looked back and forth from Adora to Sea Hawk. “Ugh, fine. You’re not worth it anyway.” With that, she shoved him back and he went flying into Mermista.

“Haha, you got beat up again.” taunted Frosta.

“Was threatening him really necessary?” Adora asked Catra, still a little pissed. “When did he steal it anyway?”

“He literally stole it right out of my fucking car.” This time, Frosta just put her own hands over her ears before Sea Hawk and Mermista could.

“ _How-_ oh, did you give him a ride?” Adora deflated. Catra gave a curt nod. “Okay then, you get a pass.” That sounded just like Sea Hawk, to be so caught up with something with some tale he was telling or so distracted that he was so unaware of his surroundings that he took the aux cord, still plunged into his phone, and waltzed out of the car without a second thought. “Thanks for not murdering him by the way. Both times.”

“How have _you_ not murdered him?” Catra gestured with the flick of her wrist to where Sea Hawk and Mermista had started intensely arguing about where the aux cord had gone off too and how this was not the first time this had happened and that she was banning him from Uber and Lyft even though he had a car of his own and he was only using car services cause he was a terrible driver and had two speeding tickets as well as three or four parking tickets.

“Mermista almost always beats me to it.” shrugged Adora.

“Oh. Well thanks for not kicking me out for ‘not behaving.’”

She couldn’t help but snicker at this. She was always so weak for Catra’s softer flirty side. “Well thanks for not storming out cause we’re you know, so freaking weird.”

“ _That’s_ what you think I was gonna do? After seeing me deal with Entrapta and Scorpia you just thought I was gonna storm off because you’re friends with a bunch of trustfund dorks?” Catra’s split eyes widened. This close to her, Adora was starting to get dizzy off the scent of cinnamon. And tonight, it wasn’t even that strong. “Jesus, you think low of me.”

Adora’s response was on the tip of her tongue but Perfuma’s was faster. “So Catra, you never told us what you do?”

“Are you in that play about cats?” asked Frosta and they all turned to stare at her in complete and utter confusion. _What_ was her deal with people dressing up as animals tonight?

“Um, no. That’s just my name.” she replied, “but _some_ people take it too literally.” she turned to glare at Adora, the beginnings of a smile on her face. That was a dig at Adora and Adora only; her reaction to finding out she was literally cat in the novel was an... interesting conversation a couple nights ago. She almost went through the five stages of grief that Adora was only able to stop by telling her what a badass she was, but only between spurts of laughing her ass off.

They ended up spending a whole hour just talking about She-Ra, parked in front of Adora’s apartment until Catra’s migraine became too painful and she had to call it quits. But she didn’t want to at first.

“Catra, you’ve been squeezing your eyes shut for the past fifteen minutes.” Adora had stopped in her tracks hyping up just what a terrible inconvenience Kyle’s character was going to turn out to be and how everyone was going to despise him, when she noticed Catra rubbing her temples. “You need to go home, I’m serious.”

She only grumbled and dug herself farther into her seat. “Ugh, Adora. Don’t tell me what to do. I’m _fine_!” Catra grunted through gritted teeth. “You were saying something about Rogelio being a fucking lizard?”

“Can you even drive?”

“Yeah,” Catra shifted and waved Adora off, “I do this all the time. Plus, it’s not like a get entertainment like this-” she gestured to her passenger with a shaky hand, “at home. Don’t you want to tell me the rest of your story? Thought you would be interested in the chance to brag.”

A warm feeling spread through Adora’s veins, like she’d had one of those tequila shots she downed so many of when trying to take down Chad. She didn’t know why Catra was so interested in her writing. The whole thing sounded like something Catra would despise and roll her eyes at. And yet she’d asked about it, and then she listened to Adora rant excitedly for an hour and a half. Instead of kicking Adora out of her car, she’d chime in with her own ideas and Adora found herself whipping out her phone to write them down. Tips like “When they’re Mermista’s kingdom remember I _hate_ the fucking water,” and “If the name of Entrapta’s reprogrammed robot isn’t Emily I’m not buying your book,” or Adora’s favorite, “I should get to tase you.”

“What?” Adora laughed, “Wait- why- why do _you_ get to tase me?”

Pawing at her head, Catra replied “It’s only fair, duh!” Adora was about to continue when Catra stuck here fingers in her mouth and bit down as if she was trying not to scream. _Her penchant for self abuse if stronger than mine- and that’s saying something._ That’s around when Adora realized just how painful her migraine was getting. _Unless she’s just_ really _annoyed with me._

Knowing Catra, Adora knew it was probably a bad mix of both.

And now, fifteen minutes later, Adora’s anxiety about Catra’s pain was getting too overwhelming. It hurt just to _watch_ her, and that was on top of the symptoms Adora quickly googled when Catra wasn’t looking.  “Okay, tell you what. If I send you a copy of the manuscript to read-”

“Ugh, _reading._ ”

“-will you go home and get some rest?” Adora nudged her shoulder and Catra’s eyes opened  a crack, “Please?”

Catra stayed silent for a painful minute, then huffed, starting the engine with the flick of her gloved wrist. “Fine. You can send me your stupid manuscript. You’re not gonna quiz me or anything super nerdy like that to see if I read it?”

“No Catra, I’m not a high school English teacher,” Adora said as she opened the door. There was a twinge of sadness in her chest now that the night was coming to an end. But she still got out of the car. She wasn’t about to keep Catra there and in excruciating pain just because she wanted to talk. “You don’t have to read it, you know.”

“Is that a challenge?” scoffed Catra.

“Nah, it’s not a challenge.” Adora leaned on the door. “But… maybe you’ll think about the illustration offer instead?”

“Ugh, you just _had_ to bring that up again. It’s like _I’m_ a challenge to you.” _Well, that is one way to put it._ “Yeah, I’ll think about it. Now leave me alone so I can drive home before my head explodes and I crash into a fucking tree.”

Adora winced. Blinking images of twisted burning metal and limbs charred beyond recognition, images of happy smiles and bright blue eyes gone and lost in a game of smoke and mirrors, images of a family never to be known back to the corners of her brain, she stepped back onto the curb. “You, uh, you probably shouldn’t joke about that.”

“Awh, are you worried about me, Princess?” Catra leaned on the steering wheel, her split eyes sparkling in the light of the street lamps.

“Drive safe, Catra.” Adora rolled her eyes as she closed the door, Catra sticking her tongue out at her ( _You’re seriously wondering why you’re part cat in She-Ra?)_ but even despite Catra’s teasing and deflection, Adora stood on her porch and watched her drive away, clinging to the strap of her backpack with white knuckles.

 _She’ll be fine,_ Adora told herself, _right?_

Her confirmation that Catra was home safe can in the form of the text next day. Catra was reading the manuscript and she had questions. Lots of them. Specifically surrounding a particular incident Adora had written very early in the story and forgotten about.

_Catra J 12:34 pm_

    ok seriously adora

Adora cocked her head, shocked that her phone had buzzed during her bakery shift and that it wasn’t an email from Light Spinners and then her shock smacked her in the face _again_ when she saw that it was _Catra_ when she pulled it out of her pocket. Then,

_Catra J 12:34 pm_

what is your obsession with me as a cat

    why am i doing cat things in your stupid story

    WHY AM I CHASING FUCKING MICE?????

Bow shot Adora a look when she burst out laughing. “It’s um, it’s a video… of a cat. It’s really funny.” _Oh nice save, Adora._ Thankfully, Bow was with a customer and couldn’t inquire more about this ‘funny cat video.’ He would have been all over that usually, sending his own videos of hamsters learning to swim or dogs sharing bed with horses (Adora did like the horse videos, sue her) or something.

_Catra J 12:35 pm_

are you secretly a furry

_Adora’s cell 12:36 pm_

I’m not a furry, Catra

_Catra J 12:36 pm_

u sure?

_Adora’s cell 12:37 pm_

Yes. Are you reading my manuscript?

_Catra J 12:37 pm_

im bored

_Adora’s cell 12:37 pm_

    suuuuuuuuuuure.

_Catra J 12:38 pm_

   oh don’t get a big fucking head princess. Marshmallow needed his stupid car so I can’t work today.

why do i have a tail

Adora lost it. Her laughing startled both Bow and Glimmer, who was in the very back of the kitchen, and all of their customers. “Sorry.” she whispered, excusing herself to the bathroom.

_Adora’s cell 12:40 pm_

    There are lots of half human/ half animal hybrids so it’s not weird for your character to be one too. and it DOESN’T make me a furry.

Adora bit her lip before sending her next explanation.

_Adora’s cell 12:40 pm_

also, when we used to play as kids you always insisted on being a cat. It didn’t matter if we were playing cops and robbers you had to be a /cat/ robber.

   you brought me a dead mouse when we were six that’s how into character you were

_Catra J 12:41 pm_

   oh shit I remember that! you thought it was cool until you realized it was real

   and dead

   didn’t think you would remember that

_Adora’s cell 12:41 pm_

told you. I remember everything.

    also, your name is ‘cat’ra

    I couldn’t resist

_Catra J 12:42_

why am i not surprised

They spent the rest of Adora’s shift texting back and forth as Catra worked her way through her rough draft. Catra would ask questions and Adora would answer them in turn. But somewhere along the way- maybe around day two when Catra was nearing the end of her manuscript- it became less about She-Ra and more just straight up teasing the crap out of each other. With Catra not working the next two nights (they had a long text chain just about that and whatever Marshmallow was doing to the car or as Catra worried, was doing _in_ the car and Adora switching back and forth from speculating to laughing at Catra) Adora found herself unable to concentrate on her work during her shifts in the women's restroom at Light Spinners- after her second week there, it’d basically become her office- more preoccupied on forming a worthy retort than she was on filling out Chad’s latest sales report. Then something incredible happened.

Adora was on the bus after clocking out (Catra without a car meant no Uber), and not to her surprise her phone buzzed and interrupted her thirteenth listen of Pat Benatar’s _Invincible_ in the last hour- what? She-Ra needed an 80’s girl power anthem, especially now that Catra kept insisting She-Ra would have been a hit in that decade- and was expecting some sarcastic taunt that she would definitely be writing in her notebook, but she instead got

_Catra J 11:09 pm_

HELLO ADORA ARE YOU CATRAS NEW FRIEND

“Huh?” But Adora didn’t have to speculate for more than thirty seconds.

_Catra J 11:09 pm_

THIS IS SCORPIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM CATRAS ROOMMATE

Gaping, Adora managed to punch a quick response.

_Adora’s cell 11:11 pm_

Hi Scorpia! It’s nice to finally meet you! Where’s Catra?

_Catra J 11:11 pm_

SHES IN THE SHOWER! BUT HER PHONE KEPT BUZZING SO I WONDERED IF SHE HAD A NEW GIRLFRIEND

And in that moment, Adora was really glad there wasn’t anyone else on the bus to see her face turn the color of those tomatoes Perfuma grew and gifted them every summer.

_Adora’s cell 11:13 pm_

Oh, I’m just her friend.

_Catra J 11:14 pm_

COOL! SHE NEEDS MORE FRIENDS YOU KN

The text ended there. Her head cocked, Adora waited for more from Scorpia, but nothing came in. _Oh! I bet Catra got out of the shower and got her phone back._ Just a precaution, Adora sent a text to check in.

_Adora’s cell 11:20_

Hello?

_Catra J 11:22 pm_

i turn my back for to fiking seconds and shr goes through my god dda,mm texts

_Adora’s cell 11:22 pm_

    is your grammar always that bad when you’re mad

_Catra J 11:24 pm_

oh laugh it up Princess Author. i was still trying to pry the phone out of her giant hands

_Adora’s cell 11:25 pm_

Scorpia seems nice

_Catra J 11:25 pm_

yeah she needs to stay out of my fucking s tuff

Scorpia had been well meaning though, according to the text she sent Adora, almost like Bow and Glimmer were well meaning. Adora shuddered. Were they gonna go through her phone? Oh Bow would have a field day with the text flirting Adora was still pretty sure amounted to nothing meaningful.

_Adora’s  cell 11:27_

why does she texting me in all caps? Is she just really excited or???????

_Catra J 11:28 pm_

she texts everybody like that. i don’t think she knows there’s a lowercase key.

Adora snorted. Again, very thankful for the empty seats surrounding her.

_Adora’s cell 11:29 pm_

I just got an idea

_Catra J 11:30 pm_

oh no

_Adora’s cell 11:30 pm_

I should make her a Force Captain in She-Ra. you guys can be buddies after you get promoted.

At first there was no response. And then five minutes of Adora killing time on her tumblr, she got

_Catra J 11:36 pm_

u sUCK ADORA

Through there new text message system, Adora learned that Scorpia worked most nights and spent her days mothering Catra- and that she was very excited to be a character in She-Ra, so much to the point that Catra had gone to her neighbor to hide. She learned that Catra had never seen Entrapta sleep (Adora asked if that’s because she slept in till three in the afternoon and Catra sent her a picture of her flipping Adora off. That was the _only_ picture she sent.) Adora learned, just around the time Catra did, that Catra was allergic to rats. (“Do _not_ put that in your stupid novel adora.” “TOO LATE THAT’s SO IRONIC). She learned that when Catra ran out of English curse words she’d start cursing out Adora in Spanish. Adora also learned that when she couldn’t sleep it turned out Catra was on the other side of Bright Moon not sleeping either.

_Catra J 3:21 am_

   why are you even up

_Adora’s cell 3:24 am_

   Why are you?

_Catra J 3:25 am_

   can’t sleep. migraine. you?

_Adora’s cell 3:27 am_

   That sucks, I’m sorry. I’m writing, it’s the only time I can.

Do you ever draw when you can’t sleep?

_Catra J 3:27 am_

   yeah sometimes

And then Adora found herself once again tempted to ask the question she’d been dying to ask since Catra sent her the first text.

   “Have you thought about being the illustrator for She-Ra?” But even as her fingers typed out the message, she knew she would erase it.                                                   

“You sound like an idiot, Adora.” she sighed into her hands. Adora pressed the backspace key on her screen until there was just a blank space with a blinking line waiting for her. Ironically, that’s exactly how her word document was looking at the moment too.

Now standing next to her in the bakery, Adora thought back to the question that was dancing at the forefront of her brain. _Give her some space! Isn’t that what you told everyone else?_ She rubbed the back of her neck and Catra glanced at her out of the corner of her eye.

_Guess I’m not as sly as I thought._

“No, right now I’m working for Uber. Ugh.” After a millisecond of side eyeing Adora, Catra went back to answering Perfuma’s question.

“Is it… fun?” asked Mermista, bracelets jangling as she put her hand on her hip.

“It fucking sucks.” The bracelets jangled again as Mermista’s hand went over Frosta’s ears, and Sea Hawk’s hands clapped over Mermista’s. “At least it pays well. And there are some benefits.”

Right at that moment, Adora was torn from the conversation when Bow popped his head out the kitchen, giving her a large, emphatic smile and thumbs up. All she could do was stare at him wide eyed. What was he even _thinking_?

“You’re doing great!” he mouthed, pumping his fists.

“ _Everyone_ can see you!” she mouthed back.

“I love you too!” was his response, and before Adora could smack her forehead Bow was yanked back into the kitchen by a tiny hand with glittery, pink nails.

“I couldn’t help but notice your tattoo,” Perfuma was saying, pointing to her own wrist. She had inched closer to Catra over the last few minutes and by the time Adora was pulled away from Glimmer and Bow’s terrible attempt at spying, Perfuma was _right_ next to Catra; that was the thing about Perfuma. She was never, ever deterred by someone else’s negativity (which explained why she was even hanging out with the likes of Adora, Mermista, and Frosta) and she never, ever turned her back on people. It was as if she was determined to heal them by proximity alone. “It’s very beautiful.”

 _Uh oh._ Catra’s head dropped and she glanced at her own gloved wrist where Selena the Cat’s tail danced on her skin, a frown on her face. _I should’ve put the tattoo on the no-no list. Damn it Perfuma how are you so perceptive?_ “It’s nothing.” Catra huffed, her voice quiet.

Adora found herself scoffing and that brought Catra’s ice cold stare from her wrist to Adora’s throat. “Uh, why are you rolling your eyes at me?”

“Cause it’s not “nothing” and you know that, Catra.” _Why do I never think before I speak?_ But despite the anger in her split eyes, Adora stood her ground. She wouldn’t bring up Selena, not here, not now, not when she barely had the right to say her name, but she didn’t have to invoke her mother’s image to make sure Catra didn’t get away with full on degradation. “You designed the tattoo and, oh yeah, gave it to _yourself.”_

“You gave yourself a tattoo?” Mermista’s eyebrows flew up and Frosta’s face lit up in admiration.

A purr-like growl started coming from Catra as Sea Hawk commented from behind them, “You know I once tried to give myself a tattoo. I remember it was going to be a dolphin.”

“No, it was going to be you puncturing yourself with an industrial needle and me dragging you to the emergency room, _again_ .” Mermista corrected him. “Ugh, that was the last time I take you to any fancy parties my parents throw _ever_ again.”

Now everyone in the room was staring at Mermista and Sea Hawk, including Catra. “Mermista, what kind of parties do your parents even throw?” Adora asked.

“Fantastic ones.” winked Sea Hawk, attempting to put his arm over Mermista’s shoulders. Of course she wasn’t having that, and right as he almost leaned over onto her completely she stepped forward and he lost his balance, only to collide with Frosta.

“So how did you give yourself a tattoo?” Frosta got around to asking after they all spent a minute and a half watching Frosta try to hit Sea Hawk with her concrete block of a school bag. “It’s on your right wrist, so are you left handed? I’m left handed, and all these” she gestured to the rest of the restaurant with a disappointed grimace, “right handers don’t get it.”

“Uh-” Catra started, annoyance in her eyes.

“She’s ambidextrous.” Adora said. Again, without thinking. Catra had that effect on her.

When they had met, Catra was left handed, solely left handed, but Mrs. Weaver nothing if not persistent and creative about round the clock torture. Catra using her left hand infuriated their caretaker and it tended to earn Catra flicks of the wrist with whatever was in Mrs. Weaver’s hand. Her hand preference made her a special target since none of the other kids were left handed, and since she hadn’t found her rebellious spark just yet, Catra did her best to use her right hand and right hand only, even when Mrs. Weaver wasn’t around.

It was one of the first real things Catra and Adora bonded over; Catra was weary of Adora despite four year old Adora’s efforts to make a friend, but when she noticed Catra struggling with her hands, she tried to help. Catra would mirror Adora’s movements with a shaky and unsteady hand, and then she just mirrored Adora everywhere.

By the time they hit kindergarten, Catra still didn’t have it. Her movements were unstable and jerky, her attempts almost always ended with a tantrum. At some point in the school year, their teacher discovered where her difficulty lay.

 _“Do you like writing with that hand?”_ Their teacher, a nice lady with red hair, knelt down by their table and pointed to Catra’s ugly attempt at her name on manila paper. She was behind the rest of the class- everyone else could write their names but Catra could only write cat out- and she’d become a pariah. It was just her and Adora at their little table in the back.

 _“No.”_  Catra sniffled.

“ _Can you try the over hand?”_

But Catra only shook her head. _“No.”_

A look of confusion replaced the kind expression on their teacher’s face. “ _Why?”_

As if she expected to be punished, Catra lowered her head and braced herself, her grip on Adora’s tiny hand becoming iron. Then she stayed quiet, letting big shiny tears drip down her face. Their teacher looked to Adora.

 _“Mrs. Weaver won’t let her.”_ It was a simple answer. It should have been a red flag.

 _“Oh, well…”_ the teacher let out a sigh, _“I won’t tell her.”_

Catra looked up, snot on her upper lip. _“But you’re the teacher.”_

 _“It will be our secret.”_ the teacher winked.

And that was all it took for Catra to let go of Adora and reach for the markers. While the other kids were at recess, Adora sat by Catra as she used her left hand to write her full name. It took a few tries, but Adora still remembered how happy Catra was when she shoved the paper in her face, yelling how she did it, how she _finally_ did it.

Thus a trend begun. Catra was allowed to use her correct hand in school so she could write, draw, cut with scissors, glue, throw wood chips at her best friend with perfect aim, only to go home and use her right hand, to eat, to brush her mane of untamable curls, to punch Lonnie. Of course, when Weaver turned her back, Catra used her left hand to pull Adora’s hair and draw on her skin. This continued for the rest of grade school; by the time Mara had cut through all the red tape to find where Weaver was hiding them, Catra had mastered use of both her hands almost perfectly. She couldn’t write as well with her write and she definitely could not draw, but it was good enough for Mrs. Weaver.

Catra’s eyes widened in surprise at Adora’s comment and she turned on her, _fast_.

“How the fuck do you remember that? And stop interrupting me Adora!” she practically hissed and kicked Adora in the shin. Cursing loudly enough to keep Perfuma’s hands -when did she _even_ get over there- over Frosta’s ears, along with Mermista and Sea Hawk, Adora grabbed her shin. _OW! Oh, it’s on!_ Some instinct, an instinct that had been dormant for thirteen years, woke up when Catra kicked her, using steel toed boots of all things. The _give-me-back-some-of-the-blanket-you-hog_ or _you-used-all-the-hot-water-in-the-shower_ instinct.

“I told you,” Adora hugged her leg closer (damn her stupid sexy boots), just enough to let Catra laugh in her victory before she let the instinct take over and grabbed a fistful on Catra’s curls, yanking her hard right out of her hubris. “I remember everything.” _So, that’s what her curls feel like._ Not exactly how she pictured feeling them for the first time, but still so lucrative. And soft.

“JESUS FUCK!” she yelped, her pinched eyes opening with white hot fury.

_If I get punched in the face, then it’s totally worth it._

Catra’s entire body tensed up, her teeth barred and fists clenched at her sides, and Adora, ready to throw her hands in front her face and foot in Catra’s stomach, felt on a odd sense of homecoming. Flashes of memories of squabbles and even full on fights she had with Catra as a little kid passed before her eyes. Throwing down in Weaver’s bareboned front yard over sidewalk chalk. Getting a black eye because she tried to cut Catra’s nails (God no wonder CPS never stepped in; all Weaver had to do was say they were all just hitting each other, and they’d believe that because Catra would be pulling Adora’s ponytail while Lonnie kicked Kyle in the crotch in the background.) Tripping Catra in the third grade when she refused to tell Adora what she was calling her in Spanish and Rogelio telling her it was mean names.

A couple weeks ago Adora was terrified Catra at her throat meant the end. Now with Catra at her throat meant coming home.

 _I’ve missed this._ Adora thought as she and Catra stood face to face, ready to kill each other in front of an audience. It was backwards, but it was also… them. Adora could see Catra flexing her stiletto claws and hoped her expression read “bring it on.”

“Hey I got freshly made cinnamon rolls, a slice of key lime pie and- whaaaat are you guys doing?” Adora didn’t even blink when Glimmer pulled up beside her with a plate full of desert. Nope. Staring at Catra- not breaking eye contact with Catra was too important. Too much was at stake!

"They’re gonna kill each other!” shouted Frosta, who still had three pairs of hands clamped over her ears. “Or makeout, I dunno I can’t hear!”

“You know I was thinking they were gonna kiss too-” Sea Hawk started and _that_ was all it took for Adora and Catra to go from standing three inches apart, so close Adora could smell the cinnamon and coconut shampoo wafting of her curls that she was currently trying to shove both her hands in, to three feet apart in almost an instant.

“I wasn’t- we weren’t-” stuttered Adora.

“Yeah, like I want to do that.” Catra rolled her eyes, and crossed her arms before her gaze fell to the floor. Adora just stood in her wake, feeling like she’d just been slapped.

 _What was I thinking?_ The urge to collapse in on herself was almost overpowering, but it wouldn’t exactly be good hostess behavior to run out the door and sulk. What was she, 16? No, a strong independent 24 year old just stood in place awkwardly rubbing her arm. God, she was stupid. Thinking Catra was even interested.

“So,” Glimmer started again, standing in the wake of the awkwardness they’d created, “I’ve got some food if you wanted some Catra. Entrapta already ate a bunch of tiny cupcakes at like, record speed. There’s none left, but I’ve got this stuff!”

Adora heard Catra huff before saying “Ugh sure, what do you have- are those cinnamon rolls?” her voice went from stoic to squeaky and Adora looked up to see Catra hovering over Glimmer, her eyes the size of moons, her eyes dilated like a cat reunited with her owner. A smile began to creep on her face.

 _Didn’t you just get rejected into next year by her?_ One part, probably the logical part, of her reiterated, but the part that kept coming back for Catra had a different thought. _Yeah but she’s so cute…_

“Yeah, I just made them.” Glimmer replied and Adora swore Catra moaned. _Oh, so the cinnamon rolls are good enough to stuff in your face but not me?_

“Are you drooling?” Adora asked, chuckling to herself.

“No!” she squeaked, “I’m- you know what shut up Adora, I haven’t eaten in like sixteen hours!”

“Neither I have, but I don’t faun over baked goods.” She should really shut up.

“You’re both disasters.” Glimmer muttered, such a tired look on her face that Adora almost felt bad.

“Go eat something dumbass,” growled Catra as she picked up one of the cinnamon rolls with only her fingers and brought it towards her mouth.

“Do you want a fork?” asked Glimmer, setting the tray down on a table and Catra followed her eyes still wide and sparkling like she was a cartoon character, frosting dripping down her chin.

“Nah, I’m good. Go take that idiot and make her eat something.” she said with the flick of her wrist at Adora.

“Oh, I think Bow put your leftover Panera Beard back in one of the fridges.” Perfuma shouted out. Frosta’s walking parental blocks had finally let go of her ears and had taken up the remaining seats at the table. While Perfuma and Frosta where still watching the Catra and Adora Show, Mermista had started taking selfies and Sea Hawk was now photo bombing them.

“I’m fine, I’ll eat later,” Adora dismissed all of them with as much cheeriness as she could muster and tried to walk to wear Catra was sitting and getting sticky sugary residue all over her fingerless gloves as she ate fast enough to choke herself, but the rumbling of her stomach caught her and everyone else off guard it was so loud, “ugh!”

A warm hand grabbed her arm and Glimmer pulled her toward the back, “Just come back to the kitchen with me. That way you can check up on what Entrapta is doing. And maybe eat?” She then looked up at Adora with so much hope in her eyes that Adora’s shoulders fell and she caved.

“Fine. But don’t go anywhere Catra and- and don’t touch anything!”

Catra just rolled her eyes and returned back to what was probably going to be her dinner. Adora hated that thought, hated that she wasn’t taking care of herself or maybe she just had been working _all_ day, and the weight of this guilt made it incredibly hard for Glimmer to drag her back to kitchen.

“We got a _lot_ to talk about, girl.” muttered Glimmer, nodding at Bow who had just poked his head out again.

“Enjoy your bruise!” Catra taunted right as Adora turned her back.

“Enjoy your tangle!”

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this will be continued into the next chapter. I apologize for the length, and if it makes the story seem unbalanced in any way. 
> 
> but, I still owe you a million thanks for reading and for keeping up with the story!  
> additional thanks goes out my beta Anna, who read the whole chapter and edited while she was moving, so she's a super hero.  
> thank you to everyone who has found me on tumblr and sent me little notes about how they feel about the story. I so glad it's resonating with so many people! Thank you to the people who pick me up when I'm down and really help the process (and thank you to paula for all your memes and pictures of puppers)
> 
> as always, I enjoy the company on [princessofgayskull](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com)


	8. turn around, leave  your heart in a riot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But maybe we should get, I dunno a different opinion? Hey Entrapta?”
> 
> “Yes?” she whirled around on her hip, wrench in hand and intrigued expression on her face. 
> 
> “What’s the definition of denial?” he threw a glance back at Adora, a devilish expression to complete his expression of pride. That boy really knew when he had the upper hand, didn’t he?
> 
> “Oh well, it has been awhile since Scorpia dared me to read an entire dictionary, Catra had thrown one at my head when we were working a shift together- oh yes, you want the definition. Denial, noun: the action of declaring something to be untrue, or the refusal of something requested or desired, but I suppose if one were to open the dictionary and search for denial they would find a picture of Adora.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ THE A/N!!!!!!
> 
> i'm back!  
> Once again, thank you for all your love and support, and all your patience in waiting for the next update. It's been wonderful getting to know you all and talk with you about all things, including catradora and she-ra. you're all incredible and fantastic people making up a wonderful fandom.
> 
> the wonderful [scorpiocatra](https://scorpiocatra.tumblr.com/)  
> did some wonderful instagram edits for this story! go reblog them and follow!  
> [best friend squad](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/183177118575/scorpiocatra-upper-west-side-instagram-edits)  
> [ super pal trio](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/183177055795/scorpiocatra-upper-west-side-instagram-edits)  
> I'm seriously still screaming about these.
> 
> so. i've learned that writing a multi chapter fic is like running a marathon, and for this chapter, I guess I decided to sprint? it's sooooooo long. Like 20k words. But I didn't want to split it up for a couple reasons. 
> 
> A couple of disclaimers before we begin: I'm not like an EMT or anything, or nurse/ doctor of any kind. I tried to lay out the sequence of events in the most logical manner as I perceived them, so they might be off. oh and I'm not a social worker either. I'm actually studying psychology, which is what I had Bow study in the story (fun story fact). I'm also not a profession writer who's published anything, so I don't know how getting something published would go down. because, alas, i am just a lowly fic writer (lol)
> 
> Big BIG trigger warning here: that's why I wanted you to read the author's note. So in this chapter Adora has a flashback, like one you could have with any traumatic disorder i.e PTSD. The flashback deals with physical child abuse and physical trauma. But, it's all italiscized, just in case you needed to skip it. 
> 
> I love you all!!!

“So… how’s it going out there?”

Rubbing her shin and biting her lip, Adora let out a huff, ready to dive in to a very dramatic reply to Bow about how annoying Catra was out there being, aggravated enough just by Adora remembering things that happened in their _shared_ childhood to assault her leg with her army grade boots, but an exasperated Glimmer beat her to it.

“Oh you know, I went out there with the food only to find them at each other’s throats, which I was certainly not expecting.” she shook her head like a disappointed teacher- or her mom on any given day. “Adora, when you told us you had a history with Catra, we were thinking something along the lines of sharing your first kiss in middle school or piercing each other’s ears and Bow had some other ideas but they were _super_ improbable- ”

“Hey!”

“-And not that you were constantly on the verge of killing each other.”

Adora grunted and rolled her eyes. It stung, but it wasn’t impossible to imagine Glimmer and Bow discussing all of her and Catra’s “chemistry” while Glimmer painted Bow’s nails and listening to a compromised playlist of Carly Rae Jepsen and My Chemical Romance. That must have been how they came up with the first kiss story. She couldn’t help but scoff at that wild thought.

Adora’s first kiss happened in high school, three years after she and Catra were separated. Catra’s on the other hand? Catra’s first kiss was Kyle and it was a horrid, ugly accident burned forever in Adora’s brain.

A few days before the Water Heater Incident, Adora shuddered at _that_ memory, Lonnie found a empty glass bottle while they were dumpster diving behind their middle school and insisted it would be “funny as hell” to play spin the bottle. The cursing started early in Weaver’s orphanage.

Armed with a fuzzy and rather minimal understanding of the rules, Adora, Kyle, Catra, and Rogelio all agreed to sneak down to the basement after dinner to play, the thrill of acting like _teenagers_ inhibiting any sense any of them had. Catra clung to Adora, all grumpy and grouchy as Weaver had taken away her dinner privileges for the third time that week. But Adora had stuffed a plastic bag of chicken nuggets she’d swiped from other kids’ plates all through the meal down her shirt and once they were safe from Weaver’s prying eye, yanked the bag out, giggling wildly as Catra’s eyes widened like a kitten seeing something it loved upon noticing the stolen goods. Her thievery appeased Catra enough to sit down beside her on the concrete and quit complaining as she shoved chicken nuggets in her mouth so fast Adora worried she wasn’t even chewing before she swallowed.

 _“I’ll go first!”_ Kyle yells echoed off the bricked walls, happy to be included for once, just as Lonnie sat her bottle down. Then they all watched as he tried and failed four consecutive times to get the bottle spinning.

 _“Um- let me do it.”_ Rogelio stepped in and with the twirl of his hand, the bottle became a whirling blur.

 _“What are we supposed to do when the bottle lands on someone?”_ Kyle panicked as the bottle spun.

 _“Kiss the person, duh!”_ shouted Lonnie. Oh, so _that_ was the object of the game, the rest of them all realized at the same exact time. The same exact time the bottle slowed to a stop and was now pointing in Catra’s direction.

 _"Wait, what?”_ she squealed, but she didn’t have time to prepare let alone think about what was gonna happen next. Catra wasn’t watching, her wide eyes still trained on the bottle as the water heater behind them groaned and churned, but Adora was, and would never forget how Kyle just shrugged- having learned _nothing_ after seven years of living with Catra- and jumped up and flung himself to smack Catra on the lips with his own. He hit her teeth dead on with a sickening _crack!_ when they collided, and Adora’s lung practically exploded with a strange jealously she’d couldn’t say she’d ever felt before, and Lonnie burst out laughing in the gratification that getting them to play this dumb game was way exceeding her expectations.

The rest played out in a hectic blur. Most of Adora’s memory was Catra pushing Kyle off her and onto the concrete, screaming bloody murder in Spanish, and breaking the bottle to attack Kyle until the rest of them wrestled Catra from Kyle’s listless body- apparently going absolutely limp was his only defense. Oh, so only when Catra attacked him with broken glass did Kyle know not to provoke her?

 _“Ugh!”_ Catra was still pretending to hurl after they abandoned the game, Rogelio taking Kyle to bandage the cut on his face- from Catra’s long nails actually, not her new glass weapon- and Lonnie giving up cause they were all lame, so Adora and Catra traded the basement for the rooftop. It didn’t matter if any of them still wanted to play the game; too much noise was coming from the basement that Mrs. Weaver would’ve gotten suspicious and most definitely would have found them. Consequences would have followed. Even as they scurried out of the basement, they past their caregiver in the hallway, muttering to herself about household appliances when Adora caught her eye. She merely smiled her toothy smiled at her, and Adora pushed Catra faster, not wanting to stick around when Mrs. Weaver found Kyle’s blood staining the basement floor.

The sun setting behind her, Adora sat hugging her knees as Catra paced with her hands in fists at her sides. “ _Why are boys so damn gross Adora? I’m never kissing anyone ever again!”_

Adora hugged her knees closer, trying to comprehend the feeling Catra’s declaration caused her. She didn’t even bother telling Catra cursing was wrong that time.

“I think she made it _pretty_ clear that she doesn’t want to kiss me.” grunted Adora, ripping herself from her nostalgia and trying to remind herself stay grounded; she was in the restaurant, not some distorted memory. She couldn’t help but wonder if Catra remembered _that._

 _Doesn’t want to kiss me but somehow cares enough to tell me to go eat? Calls me an idiot, literally the nerve of her to assume I_ don’t _care and that I don’t remember how things were with us-_

“Yeah that was rough. Sorry Adora.” Glimmer sighed.

“Wait- what was rough? Catra doesn’t want to kiss Adora? What? I’m _so_ lost, please tell me _everything_.” Bow said all in the same breath, leaving his post on the counter by Entrapta and leaping in one step over to them, pumping his fists. Adora pinched her nostrils, knowing he wasn’t going to let her get anywhere without reliving the painful and still very fresh new embarrassment.  

“Ugh, do I have too?”

Bow took in Adora’s expression of annoyed hopelessness. “Oh...Wait, was it really _that_ bad?”

Adora blinked, the image Catra’s guarded expression as ocean blue eyes caught tormented split ones for a split second coming to the forefront of her thoughts. The disgust in her voice at just the suggestion of such intimate vulnerability was still cutting Adora’s paper thin skin, even retroactively.  

That feeling of confusion and that feeling of hurt that Adora had subjected herself to that night Kyle kissed Catra was haunting her like a ghost as she leaned against the kitchen wall. _Damn it Catra._

“Basically,” thank God Glimmer was willing to save the day as Adora was too busy wondering if Catra had kicked her in the heart instead of the shin, “I came out with food and they were standing like, _super_ close.”

“How close?” Bow didn’t even stutter. Before Adora could even blink he had managed to summon a metal whisk and wooden spoon from seemingly out of nowhere ( _when_ had he even gone to the drawers to get those?) and was moving them inch by inch, closer together and inquiring if that’s how close Catra and Adora were. “This close? This close? How about this-”

“Bow!” Adora stomped her foot.

“What, I’m just trying to set the scene…”

Glimmer took a step forward and closed the distance between the whisk and the spoon until the were practically touching, and Adora felt the spark of some red hot emotion, like the beginnings of the flames that marked jealousy. Great. Her shin hurt, her stomach was still rumbling, and now she was jealous that wooden spoon was getting more affection than she was. “There. That’s how close they were.”

“Okay go on.” nodded Bow, still staring at the negative space between the baking utensils with wide eyes like he was a child seeing presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

“So then, I come out,” Glimmer pulled a spoon from her apron and marched it toward the whisk and spoon, “you see, I’m the spoon?”

“You make a great spoon.”

Adora threw her head against the wall.

Bouncing the spoon up and down as if it was a little puppet, Glimmer played herself “I ask ‘hey what’s going on,’ cause remember they’re still about to throw down? And then Frosta- I don’t have a thing for Frosta so you can just use your imagination-” Bow gave another emphatic nod, “was all ‘they’re gonna like kill each other!’ and Sea Hawk just had to be Sea Hawk and he says ‘I think they’re gonna kiss!’ And everyone was like ‘ooooooh damn!’” As much as Adora dreaded having the story retold in front of her, Glimmer’s impressions of her friends were nothing if not slightly entertaining. Slightly. (And also _really_ spot on.) “And then Catra and Adora went like this-” Glimmer then took the whisk and spoon from Bow’s grasp and flung them to opposite ends of the kitchen. “Ta da!”

 _Bonk!_ “Ow!”

“Oh crap-” winced Glimmer, realizing she had knocked Entrapta on the head with the wooden spoon, “Sorry Entrapta!”

Their new engineer turned away from the oven with a confused look until she found the spoon lying beside her duffel bag. Then, her eyes lit up and she grabbed the utensil with a oven mitted hand. “Oh, thank you for this Glimmer! It will be a big help!”

“Um...okay!” But instead of questioning further, Glimmer just flashed her a smile and thumbs up before turning back to Bow and Adora.

“Personal Log day 406, experiment with The Rebellion’s smart oven hour one, Glimmer- the manager, has bequeathed me a wooden spoon by throwing it at my head. I do not have reason to believe she was trying to give me the spoon. Evidence suggests she just hit me by accident.” Entrapta spoke into the recorder in her other hand.

“What- what part of the oven is she going to use that for?” asked Adora in the lowest whisper she could manage.

“Hmm, I don’t know.” Bow stroked his chin, “but you’re changing the subject, Adora. I’m still _very_ confused. When did Catra say she _didn’t_ want to kiss you?”

Glimmer and Adora exchanged pained expressions. “Oh yeah, that was right after they flew apart.”

“You want to go get the whisk to show Bow how she practically ran off at the _suggestion_ she should kiss me?” Adora scoffed again. It looked like in her progression of the five stages of grief Catra’s rejection had put her through she was moving on into full on pig headed and stubborn anger, full on Adora style.

Wait, what were the stages of grief again?

“Um, you ran just as fast and like, just _as_ far as she did, Adora. _And_ you weren’t the only one looking bummed the kiss didn’t happen.” Glimmer pointed out.

“What? I didn’t- _pfft-_ what are you- it’s not _like_ that- stop _looking_ at me like that, Bow! And what are you trying to say, Glimmer? I can’t hurt feelings Catra doesn’t _have_!”

 _I didn’t, did I? I mean, it’s not like she’s made any moves on me? She just flirts and that’s just Catra being Catra. Right? And_ why _would she say she doesn’t want to kiss me if she does?_ Just the thought of Catra actually wanting to kiss her had Adora’s spinning and her thoughts drowning in confusion. And something else… desire? Devotion? Fascination? A completely new emotion that made her heart beat too fast and painted her chest red and made her crave the taste of cinnamon on her tongue?

Oh God, she was losing her mind.

Placing his hands on his hips and letting out a long sigh, Bow shook his head and adopted the Adora-I-love-you-but-you’re-being-dysfunctional-again expression, and Adora knew then she was in for a lecture. She was rolling her eyes before he even opened his mouth. Either Adora was harboring enough built up rage to run a marathon (What, she did that once after the last presidential election) or Catra’s punk attitude was starting to be a bad influence. Coupled with her low blood sugar, Adora kept her lips pursed as Bow started just to keep herself from saying something she didn’t mean.

“Adora, you’re way overthinking this!” he clicked his tongue, “It sounds like Sea Hawk just caught you both off guard, like Sea Hawk is _always_ doing with _everyone._ Remember the oven like twenty minutes ago?”

“Oh God, can we not talk about that? It’s not something I want to relive.” Glimmer grimaced, putting her forehead in her hand.

“It’s just-” Adora caught herself and sighed, “things are weird now, or they’re going to be weird okay? And that’s- that’s exactly what I was afraid of! That she would be all skittish around me and now she’s going to be and we’re literally back to square one! Ugh!” she stomped her foot only to regret it instantly (probably like how Catra was regretting coming here tonight and regretting letting Adora back into her life), pain from her fresh bruise reverberating up her leg. “Fuck!”

“Adora!” Glimmer gasped as Bow clutched his hands to his chest. Even Entrapta perked up enough to hit her head on the top of the oven.

“You never, ever say fuck! The last time you said it was when Fox canceled Brooklyn 99!” Bow took a deep breath and scratched his chin. “I think Catra’s more under your skin than you want to admit.”

Nodding in agreement, Glimmer added “She’s out there dropping F-bombs like every sentence! I’m surprised Perfuma hasn’t made Frosta put in headphones! And earmuffs! She’s totally rubbing off on you, and I think you’re rubbing off on her. She’s actually a lot nicer to me than I thought she’d be.”

“Pfft, it _isn’t_ Catra, well it is Catra, she kicked me in the shin with those stupid sexy- I mean ugly! Ugly boots of hers! And just because I remembered she’s ambidextrous.” frowned Adora. Whoops.

“Sexy, huh?” Glimmer raised an eyebrow, with a look on her face that said ‘you’re never gonna live this one down.’

“Why’d she kick you?” Bow asked, opening up one of the fridges and pulling out a bag of frozen pink frosting.

Adora sighed and whispered a quick thank you as she took the bag and placed it on her aching shin. It’d been so long that Adora forgot how much punch Catra packed. She doubted she’d forget anytime soon. “She got mad at me because I remembered that she was ambidextrous.”

“That’s stupid.” snorted Glimmer.

“That’s _Catra._ ” Over by the oven, Entrapta’s quiet laughter at this comment was just loud enough to be heard over her tinkering.

“That seems like a pretty weird thing to get mad about,” Bow was scratching his head, “Maybe she’s just blown away by how super compassionate you were being. I mean, Glimmer’s right. Her entire aesthetic is, to paraphrase John Mulaney,” his expression fell comically stoic, “Do not fuck with me…” Glimmer and Adora could only stare and this prompted an actual explanation. “Maybe she’s not used to people being thoughtful and was shocked that you cared enough to remember.”

“Okay Bow, let’s be real.” Adora found herself laughing, “This is Catra we’re talking about! She’s guarded, she’s angry, and she doesn’t second guess every action she makes or somebody else makes!”

Again, Glimmer snorted. “Yeah, that sounds like _somebody_ else we know.”

“I’m just gonna ignore that. Catra isn’t affected by a lot, least of all _me._ She thinks I’m some dorky, privileged white chick-”

“You’re not?” Bow raised an eyebrow of his own and Adora pulled at her hair.

“Are you guys on my side or not?!”

“Yeah, sorry, couldn’t resist. Continue.”

“I just,” Adora sighed, rubbing her arm, “when we were kids, I used to be able to read her. We were- just in sync, I dunno it’s hard to describe. I thought I knew everything about her and that she knew everything about me,” swallowing, Adora wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, trying not to think about boxes under beds and how even with all Catra knew about her now, she didn’t know everything, “and now we’re here and I was wrong and she will only let me in, like an inch! And now I think she’s _flirting_ with me, and I have no idea what that means or what her endgame is! I’m just _so_ confused and oh, God I think I’m gonna faint.”

Glimmer stepped forward, placing her hands on Adora’s shivering arms. “Adora, I think… I think you need to be patient. I know you probably want things to go right back to the way things were with Catra, but it has been a really, really long time. I mean, I’m no Bow-Guru, when it comes to these kind of things, but I actually think things are better than you think, and I only watched you guys for like five minutes!”

“Really?” Adora’s shaky hands steadied her friend’s grip.

“You’re like the only one she’s really comfortable around.” winked Glimmer. When Adora scoffed, Glimmer bumped her shoulder, “No I’m serious! She freezes up like one of those black cats with all their hair on their back like standing up all straight- which Catra is not, I don’t know if I’m the only one picking up on that Ms. Leather Jacket Frayed Tank Top Combo-” Bow and Adora burst into laughter at this, “- like that’s _gay,_ honey. Major, _major_ lesbian vibes. Anyways, I totally got off track. What was I saying? Oh yeah! She is _super_ comfortable around you.”

“Like when a cat blinks up at you real slow!” Bow pointed out.

“Also, from what I could tell, you were like, seriously flirting with her.”

“You think she noticed?” mumbled Adora, back to rubbing her arm.

“ _Yes.”_

“Everyone noticed Adora.”

“Crap.” she bit her lip. So much for subtly.

“But I think she was into it.” again, Glimmer gave her a reassuring bump to the shoulder.

“You’re either making that up,” Adora shook her head, a pained smile on her face, “or you’re just really into giving me false hope.”

“Oh come on Adora! This is not in your head! We know you’ve been texting Catra for like the past week.” Now Glimmer was glaring, her obvious frustration leaking into her voice.

Adora blinked. “You do?”

“Yeah, we figured that out like couple days ago.” Bow shrugged.

“Uh-how?” _I was so careful._

“Well you usually don’t hide in bathrooms during work or no one else but me sends you cute cat videos. Also when the whole gang was here the other day for lunch and you didn’t look up from your phone _once,_ even though everyone you knew was there.” explained her roommate.  

“It was only a matter of time before we put two and two together.” Glimmer finished for him.

“You guys didn’t- I…why didn’t you guys say anything?” Adora, chewing on her lip, glanced at her friends.

“Well,” Bow rubbed his neck, “Catra’s not the only one who’s really skittish. You’ve been so weird about this whole thing that we thought it might be best to give you some space and let you work it out for yourself. If you needed us, we figured you would come to us.”

Oh. Well now she just felt like an idiot. A really oblivious idiot who couldn’t even pick up on the fact that her roommates had picked apart her entire charade in less than a couple of days.

“Maybe… you should do that with Catra? You guys obviously do have some kind of bond even if it is really weird, but you do trust her right?” Adora gave a limp shrug. “And it looks like she trusts you, a _lot._ ” _Maybe about as far as she can throw me._

“What I think Glimmer is trying to say is that, maybe you should trust that she still cares because she’s still here. She just may not know how to show it.” Bow jumped in.

Letting out a long sigh, Adora realized her lip was totally bleeding. The pressure from her teeth had torn her skin and it had gone completely under her radar. “Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks guys.”

Bow flashed her a warm smile, those baby brown eyes of his ringing with pride and love, and Glimmer squeezed her hand. “Maybe don’t thank us yet.” Wincing, she sent a look at Bow. “We’ve kind of… been writing fanfiction about you two…”

“Huh?” the noise Adora made was not human.

“Glimmer! That was supposed to be a secret!” Bow shouted, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Well she was going to find out eventually!” Glimmer hissed back, “We’re not exactly agents of M5 and once Adora ate something she was bound to figure it out!”

“Okay,” stuttered Adora, “now _I’m_ the one who’s confused!”

“So before you freak out, it’s not exactly fanfiction, I’m _you’re_ the writer around here.” Glimmer corrected. “Once we figured out you were texting each other and that you put Catra in She-Ra we kind of freaked out and we also kinda made a ship name and have been coming up with fic tropes.”

“Team Catradora! We’re thinking either childhood friends to best friends to lovers or! Or, enemies to lovers! I’m more of an enemies to lovers person” Bow was practically dancing to some unheard tune, probably whatever theme song he’d picked from his Taylor Swift playlist for her and Catra. He probably made _them_ a playlist.

“Oh my God.” Adora whispered into her hands. As much as she wanted to be furious with them, she didn’t have the energy. But also, is _that_ really what this looked like to them? Like some stupid story that tossed aside all the unyielding trauma and agonizing pain that they had been through, that they had put _each other_ through?

What was happening to Catra and Adora right now was the _furthest_ thing from any fanfiction she’d ever read or written.

“What, are you gonna start betting on when we’re gonna get together?” she rolled her eyes, still a little bit in the wake of shock and betrayal.

“Hey that’s a good idea, I do need money for textbooks-”

“BOW!” Glimmer shouted, shutting him up immediately and making Entrapta jump once more. “ _Not_ the appropriate time! Right now, I think it’s best we say sorry-”

“Sorry Adora. We definitely crossed a line.” At least Bow was being genuine.

“-And find Adora’s dinner.”

As if on cue, Adora’s stomach made another loud rumbling sound. “I’m on it!” Bow was at the main fridge before she could even blink. Oh God food. Food sounded good. Digesting sounded good. Being able to form coherent thoughts because her blood sugar wasn’t dangerously low was good. Running on anything but emotion sounded good. Like some ravenous and rabid animal, Adora yanked the styrofoam to-go box from Bow’s outstretched hand as soon as he pulled it out of the fridge, pried it open with so much force she broke the seal, and started shoving her roasted turkey BLT in her salivating mouth before anyone or anything could stop her.

“It’s like two sides of the same coin.” muttered Glimmer, watching the scene unfold with wide eyes.

“Huh?” Adora glanced up from the sandwich that was falling apart in her hands. _Crap, my tomato._

“Oh nothing.” the baker shrugged and sighed.

“Hey Glimmer! There’s a customer out here!” Just as Adora saved the tomato from falling onto the dirty tile floor (at no point was she losing _any_ calories given how much this meal probably put Perfuma out) Mermista’s voice echoed into the kitchen and Glimmer deflated.

“Oh great. Well, I should get back out there before Sea Hawk tries to ring up an order and breaks our whole display case.”

“Fey Glimfer-”

“Yes, I’ll check on Catra.” Glimmer winked as Adora tried not smile and chew too fast at the same time lest she choke, “I got you bae.”

Glimmer’s absence left Adora with Bow and Entrapta, her loud chewing the only thing keeping them from descending into an super uncomfortable silence. Bow didn’t appear bothered too much by it, though. He just resigned himself to leaning on the counter, watching Adora gobble another half of a sandwich with no consideration for manners. That being said, Bow’s patience knew no bounds. He’d lived with Adora and Glimmer for this long.

“You feeling better?” he asked as Adora downed the last few bites.

Adora nodded, swallowing. The sandwich had left her mouth dry and she scoured the kitchen counters for anything to drink. “I guess I kinda went off the rails there.”

“We don’t blame you.” Bow brushed her off as she went for the fridge. After a thirty minute lecture that almost became a sermon at the hands of Perfuma about the dangers of dehydration, Glimmer stocked one of the main refridgerator of the kitchen with water bottles. (“They’re plastic, so _please_ don’t tell Perfuma.” Glimmer had made them swear on the name of the Best Friend Squad not to tattle.) “Really attractive people can have that effect, and I gotta admit, Catra’s pretty hot.”

Bouncing one of the water bottles in her hands, Adora sent Bow a look that had him throwing his hands in the air. “Hey, I won’t make a move, I am firmly on team Catradora, here to help my roomie find love.”

“Love, yeah okay.” she chuckled.

“What? I’m serious!” he pressed, but it just earned him another good-intentioned eye-roll and an amused smile. As Adora downed the rest of the water bottle in a swift gulp, Bow let out a gasp she could only recognize from when they all watched Drag Race together. “Adora! You’re not one of those people who doesn’t believe in love, are you?”

“Pfft, no! I believe in lots of types of love, platonic love, love you can have for horses or all pets really, love you can have for really cute babies on the subway-”

“But not romantic love?” he finished, eyebrows raised.

“I dunno, isn’t like real romantic love- you know, rare?” Maybe she was speaking from one too many past relationships that ended up in the garbage, or a guardian whose long time partner bolted when she came home with a terrible diagnosis and terrible prognosis. Maybe she was coming from a place a spending lonely nights staring at picture perfect wedding photo only to have the photo of a unrecognizable bride and groom having gone up in flames heavy in her other hand. Bow opened his mouth to retaliate, but it was actually Entrapta who beat him too it.

“No it’s not rare. Not by scientific standards. Given its high statistical significance and you’re definition of ‘real love’ it happens more often than one might think, I illegally downloaded some fascinating studies on the iPad we have on display on the store-”

“Okay thank you Entrapta!” Adora shut her down, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, and Entrapta lifted her goggles to stare at the two of them. “Look, I’m in my early twenties. Between working two jobs and trying to get a novel published, when am _I_ gonna find love? I mean, let’s be real here.”

“Well maybe you found it a long time ago and I dunno, lost it and found it again?”

Bow’s voice echoed in her head, her hands sweating once again. She clutched her own wrist like a life line, just feel her pulse beating rapidly- oh God was she having another panic attack, she just had like four!- her eyes looking past Bow to the lights glowing on the refrigerator. A gold light and blue light burning her retinas, permanent images in her eyes. Adora closed her eyes; blue and gold, gold and blue, dancing behind her eyelids. All this time Adora had sworn she’d been broken, thrown to the pavement by the force of a bad hand, a distant divinity that birthed her into tragedy, and took and took and took until she was bare bones that shattered upon impact. All her life people promised, they sang and prophesied that love would make her whole again. Only love never stuck, it never healed her splintered hands and scraped knees, it never packed any punch or stole the wind from her lungs. She was already living three different lives, equally torn by the forces of the past and the future, there was no longer any point to dating when it would only amount to a watered down distraction. And then right as she was about to break again under pressure she herself had created, Catra pulled up in her car that night at Light Spinner’s.

Catra made Adora feel whole again, and that was all Adora ever wanted. But it was more than she deserved, and there was no proof love was simply the state of being whole once again. There was no proof that love was _this_ feeling or anything Catra made her feel.

Wasn’t it like, supposed to be more than that?

“Bow, why are you trying to  insinuate that I have feelings-for- for Catra?” _Act confident, act confident._

“Because I think you do!” Well, at least Bow was being straightforward if he was going to be the bigger person. “It’s not like you to spiral seven times in a night or make a powerpoint of how to handle her visiting the bakery, print it out and glue it in your planner, then leave it on counter this morning wide open!”

_That’s where I left my planner._

_“Plus_ you were so mad about her not wanting to kiss you! _You_ were hard core flirting with her!”

“There is _nothing_ going on between me and Catra! And the planner doesn’t mean anything Bow! I was just- you know, overthinking things!” Right?

How was this any different than how Adora prepared for her job interview with Light Spinners or the binders of planning she had out for She-Ra? She bit her lip, fidgeting with her hands. It was the same use of sleepless nights, same amount of anxiety, same amount of sweating. Adora scoffed, turning from Bow. But when she closed her eyes, blue and gold lights still shone in her retinas.

Now that she thought about, Adora had been really sloppy with her layout and in an really impulsive move, went with Garamond instead of Times New Roman as her primary font. Adora only did stuff like that when she was blinded by distraction. “We’re barely friends!” She tried that explanation again, hoping it would make a dent in Bow’s argument.

“Um, Glimmer and I are your friends Adora, we’ve been your best friends since freshman year of University but you spent more time texting _Catra_ than you did anyone else this week.”

“I did not!” Adora, her voice fluttering, planted her hand on her hip.

“You sent a combined total of _three_ texts to us and that was to the group chat!”  

“I do _not_ have feelings for Catra, Bow!”

“Okay, okay if you say so. I won’t say anything.” Bow shook his head and put his hands up in surrender, and for amount Adora thought she’d won the battler, but then he turned around. “But maybe we should get, I dunno a different opinion? Hey Entrapta?”

“Yes?” she whirled around on her hip, wrench in hand and intrigued expression on her face.

“What’s the definition of denial?” he threw a glance back at Adora, a devilish expression to complete his expression of pride. That boy really knew when he had the upper hand, didn’t he?

“Oh well, it has been awhile since Scorpia dared me to read an entire dictionary, Catra had thrown one at my head when we were working a shift together- oh yes, you want the definition. Denial, noun: the action of declaring something to be untrue, or the refusal of something requested or desired, but I suppose if one were to open the dictionary and search for denial they would find a picture of Adora.”

Gasping, Bow twirled around and pointed his fingers at Adora. Adora, crossing her arms, stood her ground.

“Was my experimentation with a burn effective?” Entrapta peaked around Bow’s legs to where Adora was fuming.

“Uh, more than effective!” Bow’s voice broke he was so freaking excited, “Never change Entrapta, never change!”

“That was not in any of my future plans-”

“I still don’t see how that proves that I _like_ Catra! God like? I-I sound like I’m in the sixth grade!” Adora stomped her foot. She was aware of how she was sounding and acting like a child and that she was basically throwing a tantrum, but Bow didn’t seem to be hearing her.

“Well you definitely have feelings for her.” Bow was just going to push all her buttons tonight apparently.

Feelings. She could practically hear Catra cackling at the notion or the words “have feelings for.”

Shaking her head, Adora said again “Bow, I don’t have feelings for Catra.” Yet the words felt foreign in her mouth, like they didn’t quite belong to her.

“Evidence states that you’re feeling something.” Entrapta pointed out, “Your hands are shaking even though you ate a meal and the temperature in here is adequate, your pupils are dilated and your cheeks and breasts are flushed-”

“Okay, that’s enough Entrapta!” Adora shouted, covering her chest just after looking down and seeing- _oh great, I look like Kyle when he was sunburned-_ that she turned a deep shade of scarlet. Did her face look like that too? Oh no. “So what if I have feelings, and I’m not saying I _do,_ but Catra and I have miles to go before we end up in whatever fairy tale you and Glimmer have planned for us. I’m sorry Bow, it’s just not in the cards- or stars, or whatever analogy you want to use.”

“You’re afraid.” murmured Entrapta as she dug through her bag.

“Huh?”

Pulling out a blow torch and lighter ( _Well now I’m afraid)._ “You’re afraid of being happy. You’ve calculated the numbers in your head, and each result doesn’t compute. The risk is not worth taking. Catra exhibits similar behaviors when we’re at home.” Entrapta then leaned on her back and placed her head on the bottom rack of the oven, taking the lit blow torch to the top of the oven and throwing out a chunk of cut wires out with her other hand.

Bow and Adora exchanged a look. “ _What were the wires for?”_ she mouthed only for Bow to return this with a wild shrug. It turned out while Bow, Glimmer, and Adora debated her dicey situation with Catra, Entrapta was uncoiling wire like she was winding a tape.

Afraid. The word was like a punch in the stomach. Adora had spent her whole life being afraid. Of Mrs. Weaver. Of Mara dying. Of what lay in her past and kept her from her future.

Afraid of letting the people she loved down. Afraid of failing yet terrified of success. Afraid of moving forward.

 _“You are brave, loyal.”_ Razz had said, “ _But afraid.”_

 _“How do I-”_ Adora tripped over her own legs chasing after a shuffling Razz. At sixteen, Adora long towered over the elderly woman, but she’d always been taller than Razz. Her new legs of a discombobulated daddy long leg were the result of another painful growth spurt. But the morning after Mara’s funeral, Adora was sitting with a different kind of pain. It didn’t help that Razz moved as usual, as if nothing had changed or nothing was wrong. She didn’t care that all of Adora’s belongings now littered her already cluttered floor and she didn’t worry like Adora did that being practically blind and a fall hazard even with her walking stick, that she would hurt herself. “ _How do I stop being afraid?”_

 _“Stop being afraid?”_ Razz sputtered with laughter. _“Why would you want such a silly thing?”_

Taking a deep breath, Adora blinked and the image of the closest thing to a grandmother she’d ever had dissipated, replaced by the kitchen and Bow’s worried face. _Oh, Bow._ Adora guessed she would get to that. It wasn’t like they were done discussing this at length. Instead she turned to watch their old friend from college, who had rolled the blow torch on the floor and was now muttering to herself as she looked up into the oven with her phone’s flashlight.

“Hey Entrapta?” Adora asked, dragging her feet over to the oven.

“Yes?”

Adora waited a second, trying to think of how best to word her question. “What’s- what’s Catra like as a roommate?”

“Oh.” Entrapta raised herself on her elbows, her forehead wrinkling as she thought over  Adora’s words. “On my roommate scale that I designed, Catra is a 8.4, give or take .2 points on the days where she is volatile versus the days where she is cordial. Catra lets me carry out my experiments and she makes sure I eat. It was during one particular instance that we both lost our eyebrows because I was startled by her entrance with hot pockets she made in the microwave I updated.”

 _She lost her eyebrows? Oh, I am_ so _bringing that up later._

“I believe she has trouble sleeping. Even after several experiments conducted during her worst episodes, I haven’t been able to deduce anything that will help her, rather that she just wants to be left alone. She’s befriended most of the other tenants despite her introverted tendencies. Recently, Catra spends most of her time secluded, drawing.”

“She draws?” That was something Catra always downplayed when they talked.

“Yes, provided she can’t sleep. Which is a lot, as a I said. Many other variables come into play there. Unfortunately, she will not let me see even though I show her the upgrades I made to her laptop,” sighed Entrapta, motioning for her duffel bag with her ungloved hand.

Adora pushed it her way with a gentle kick of her foot. “Yeah that sounds like Catra.”

“Catra draws?” Bow perked up at this.

Nodding in tandem, Adora and Entrapta turned to look at Bow. “She's quite proficient.”

“She’s amazing.” Adora whispered under her breath. This prompted Entrapta to glance in her direction, and she could practically feel the way Entrapta was staring at her behind her goggles. “You know she has a tattoo she gave herself?” Adora coughed, trying to change the subject. Bow’s eye widened and he cracked a smile.

“Yes I did- oh, you were addressing Bow. Bow, did you know?” asked Entrapta.

“Um, no! That’s so hardcore! Wait- doesn’t that like, really hurt?” he voice cracked, and he got that twisted look on his face, his nose scrunched up and his pupils growing three times their normal sized, one Adora recognized from when Angella made them all get flu shots. As well adjusted and rational as Bow was, even he couldn’t escape his lingering childhood phobias. Bow harbored a deep, unmoving fear of needles. Shame or secrecy about his fear, that he didn’t harbor. And everytime he fainted after the flu shot- and that one time in college he went with Glimmer when she donated blood and they all found out about his hysterical fear once he hit the floor at the first sight of the shiny silver needle- he would just brush it off, after screaming at length of course.

“They freak me out okay! Fainting is a perfectly good reaction to stabby things! But hey- I totally did it! I got the shot! Take _that_ persisting blood-injection-injury type phobia!” He’d yell, his hands cupped around his mouth so all of CVS could hear of his accomplishment, and then he’d pump his fists in the air, lift himself off the floor and announce they were all going to get frozen yogurt, Angella included- much to Glimmer’s chagrin.

It went without saying Bow getting a tattoo would be out of the question, and Adora was surprised as she watched as he started to turn all blue and gray from holding his breath, that the idea of Catra taking a needle to her skin repeatedly _and_ voluntarily hadn’t put him in a coma on the kitchen floor.

“I’d suppose Catra built up an immunity to pain, or she just enjoys it.” Entrapta was back to ripping wires from their really expensive oven. “She has several tattoos, pain notwithstanding.”

“Several.” Bow blanched and made a high pitched noise.. “That’s so cool, not terrifying at all- you okay Adora? You look like you’re about to punch something.”

Adora’s next words were a grumble, “Ugh, stupid Catra won’t let me see her tattoos.”

Ever since Adora accidentally laid eyes on the ink scarred and painted on Catra’s wrist and Catra then alluding to having more, the thought of the other works of art on Catra’s body had lingered in the back of Adora’s mind. In those quiet moments, in between the chaos of the bakery or the annoying antics of Light Spinners or the daunting feelings that _She-Ra_ was closing in on the final chapters, Adora found herself returning to that thought. What were her tattoos of? Selena the Cat was her history, the remnants of memories placed where she could not forget them, so what other symbology could the others hold? Also, where were they?

Adora tried not to dwell on that last thought too much.  

Over their past rides, Adora hadn’t pushed it. Catra would show her her tattoos whenever she was ready. It was just a waiting game. How unfortunate that Adora was _not_ a patient soul. “Entrapta, have you seen her tattoos?”

“Of course, Adora.” Entrapta replied, not even looking up from the oven. “We live in the same apartment and given the 678.32 square footage of our living space, we’ve all seen each other naked, the last incident occurring 4.5 days ago when my rat Emily jumped on her in the shower.” Bow and Adora both wore expression faces of intrigue and terror. “Based on that experience, it appears Catra still has the same amount of tattoos as she did the last incident: one on each of her shoulders, two on her ribcage, one of which is right under her left breast, the other a little lower, one on her wrist- the one Adora said to be the one she gave herself, and one on the base of her neck.” _Oh, so all convenient locations she can just easily cover up._

“Wow Entrapta, I remember that your memory was really good, but not that detailed. I'm seriously impressed.” Bow smiled. At least he was no longer obsessing about needles. Entrapta muttered a quick thank you.

“I just wish there was a way that _I_ could see them!” Adora threw her hands up and started pacing in a circle.

Choking on his own laughter, Bow’s voice got low, “That _doesn’t_ involve seeing Catra naked?”

“Oh be quiet, Mr. Catradora!”

“I want to be called that until I die.”

“She’s just been so _aggravating_! I mean, tonight she did come and bring Entrapta and she’s been putting up with Frosta being all snarky and Perfuma being intrusive and _Seamista.”_ Adora rolled her eyes. “Ugh, she’s never gonna take that stupid jacket off! If I, I dunno asked her nicely, she’d find duct tape and tape it to her body!”

“Ooh, I have duct tape!” Entrapta chimed in.

“At this rate I’ll get to see her tattoos when we’re like eighty!”

“Adora, didn’t Glimmer just tell you to be patient and trust Catra?” asked Bow.

 _I_ am _being patient! I’ve been patient for weeks! I haven’t pushed the illustration offer, I haven’t even brought it up! And I’m dying out here!_

But all this time, Adora realized in that moment of intense concentrated pacing and punching her own palm, that she’d been going about this all wrong. She knew that her go-to methods of brute force weren’t giving her the results she wanted, so maybe it was time to change tactics. Catra… Catra would play this smart. Sneaking and slithering was her way, getting in people’s heads was her way, and Adora fell for it over and over. But when _Adora_ snuck around and behaved like Catra, the tables always turned.

Adora’s eyes caught the thermostat at the other end of the kitchen. “What if I… what if I could get her to take the jacket off...without her knowing I was getting the jacket off?”

“Uhh, Adora? What are you doing?” Bow’s voice filled with extreme apprehension as Adora tossed her apron off to the side, marched over to the thermostat and ripped off the yellow post note that read “ _DO NOT TOUCH!!!!”_ in pink glitter pen. Adora breathed out through her nose, trying to bury her remorse. _Sorry about this Glimmer._ Then she jabbed her finger on the tiny rubber arrow pointing up, a feeling of wicked satisfaction running through her as she watched the temperature go from 68 degrees to 85.

“Direct action.” Adora’s pony tail flew behind her forehead as she turned to her roommate with a smile. It was time to play the game Catra’s way. “Might want take your sweatshirt off Bow, it’s about to get hot in here.”

_

Her new tactic employed, Adora exited the kitchen with a smile and the sure sense that her hands were starting to sweat for a different reason. Bow, because he was Bow, tried to protest but Adora brushed him off. Entrapta on the other hand, declared that she hadn’t had this much fun since the time when she programmed the MegaMart intercom to play ads for competing stores on twenty minute intervals. Adora got lucky; Bow had about a million excited questions about that incident and Adora was able to slip out of the kitchen, Bow none the wiser.

But her pride and poise didn’t go hand in hand, and Adora bumped into Glimmer on her way out, a platter of baked goods falling to the floor. “Oh crap! I’m- I’m sorry Glimmer!”

“It’s fine!” she waved her off as the both bent down to pick the goods up, “Huh, I feel really warm all of sudden. Oh no, am I getting sick? If I get sick my mom is gonna make me see her-”

“Hey, it’s okay Glimmer!” Adora bit her lip, contemplating letting Glimmer in on her plan. But she also didn’t want Glimmer to know she messed with the thermostat. She had a strict, _strict_ , rule about the thermostat: only Glimmer could touch it and it was to stay at 68 degrees during the spring. This rule had come from Frosta, Glimmer and Adora’s attempt to make a tiny ice skating rink in the walk in freezer and had plummeted the temperature of the whole bakery to do so. The resulting bill made a huge dent in their profits, Angella and Glimmer fought for a week about it, and in the end the rule had prevailed. It didn’t matter how many times Bow laughed and jokingly called Glimmer ‘Mr. Krabs.’ So Adora fibbed instead. “You look fine, you’re probably just overworked.”

“Oh.” Glimmer didn’t looked relieved and Adora’s guilt cut her to the bone. Then,

“Ha! You’re such a clutz, Princess!” cackled Catra from the other side of bakery. Adora looked up to see she was on the wrong side of the display case. Her determination returned in full force as Catra continued to open random drawers and rifle through them, a look of boredom on her pretty face.

Adora lowered her voice. “Glimmer what is Catra doing back here?”

“I dunno, she just followed me back here.” Glimmer shrugged, placing the fallen scones back on to the tray. “I think she was bored waiting for you. You were like hiding from her.”

 _Because_ you _dragged me back there to eat!_

“And-and you let her?” It was shocking to Adora that Glimmer let Catra back here and a shouting match hadn’t erupted between them. Glimmer wasn’t one to let people that were basically strangers waltz in and out of her life’s work, let alone hang out and look through  their restaurant equipment.

“Well, remember that customer I had to go ring up? He was being like, really rude and condescending and he kept making short jokes, like I haven’t spent my whole life hearing _those_ and then Catra came and just stood behind me. He shut up then _and_ put five dollars in the tip jar! How sweet is that?”

“Oh.” That was sweet. Not the tip thing, although it could be something to add to Entrapta’s check, Adora thought. But only after a fraction of night knowing Glimmer, she willingly intimidated a customer.

_That’s kinda hot._

Catra was the overprotective type. She always had been. Not in the way Adora was overprotective, where she’d battle a hurricane so that the people she loved would remain safe, but in the way that no one, _not a single person,_ fucked with the people she called her own without paying the price. That’s how even Kyle’s school yard bullies ended up falling hard on the floor because Catra had snuck in during their recess and took all the screws out of their desks.

 _Maybe Glimmer is right. Maybe I do need to be patient._ Adora thought to herself as she helped her best friend up. _I really need to give Catra the benefit of the doubt-_

“Hey Adora.” Catra caught her attention, turning around from the counter holding a cup of pink frosting. Her split eyes locked with Adora’s, she stuck her middle finger into the frosting and slipped it out, then rang her tongue up her frosted finger.

A strange sensation flooded Adora’s chest: a uncomfortable mix of arousal and anger. And either the heat had actually turned on in the bakery, of her armpits were sweating for a completely different reason. A reason that was cackling like a super villain with pink frosting all over her mouth.

“Catra.” Rolling her eyes looked convincing right? “You’re so gross.”

“Yeah, sure. Tell that to your face Princess.” But Catra’s victorious smile disappeared as Adora marched over to Catra and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her out from behind the counter just as she grabbed a bunch of napkins with her free hand. “Ow, Adora! Jesus!” she yelped as Adora pulled her to the front of the display case and shoved the napkins in her hand.

“I’d feel better if you weren’t sticking your hands in all of our products. _Why_ were you even doing that?” Adora put her hand on her hip.

“S’bored.” Catra shrugged, wiping her mouth. “You were back there for like a fucking hour! And Glimmer didn’t seem to mind!”

“That’s because Glimmer is a nice person!”

“You’re dumb customers aren’t. Did you at least eat something dummy, or am I gonna have to spend the rest of the night listening to your whale of a stomach?” she raised an eyebrow, a crooked smile on her face.

Adora bit back a grin of her own.“Yes, I ate. I’m guessing you did too? How many cinnamon rolls did you shove in your face? Three?”

“Four.” Catra mumbled and her eyes fell to the floor. “What’s Entrapta doing? Did she fix the oven?”

“Um, she pulled out a bunch of wires out of it and used a blow torch for a while, so...”

“Yeah, that’s kind of Trapta’s whole process. It’s either gonna work twice as good, or go up in fucking flames. Hope you have insurance.” she finished with a wink.

 _Crap, I don’t think we have insurance._ Adora leaned back on to the display case. Heat was prickling at her skin and the change in temperature was now palpably uncomfortable. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Frosta throw her hoodie off and toss it at an unexpecting Sea Hawk and grumble something about climate change. Her eyes then fell back on Catra at the sound of violent ripping to find she was yanking her leather gloves off using only her nails, agitation written on her face. _Yes! This is working!_

“Hey can I talk to you about something?” Catra’s voice was quiet and Adora noticed she had taken a step closer, angling her body away from any prying eyes.

“Uh,” Her anxiety skyrocketed like she had skyrocketed the room’s temperature. That phrase. That phrase was the worst! It could literally mean anything and therefore could mean so many terrible and bad things. And what were the chances this was going to be positive, and not a prank that embarrassed Adora in front of a whole bakery of people? Nothing good came of that phrase. _What is happening? Why is she looking at me like that? Why is she whispering? Does she know what I’m doing?_ One phrase was all it took to spiral. “Um, sure. Yeah. Anything. I am down to chat about- um whatever.” _That was too many yes’s._

“Uhhh, okay. So um, I was thinking, you know about- oh God I sound so _fucking_ stupid! I had this all planned out in my head and- are you wearing a shirt that says ‘Sword Lesbian?’” her rambling turned into a satisfied and snarky smartass grin as she caught sight of Adora’s shirt. Now that Adora had discarded her apron back in the kitchen, her outfit was basically Catra’s new ammo to fire as she pleased.

Adora glanced down. By all technicalities, it was racerback, not a shirt, so she was wrong about that. Bright pink, with a drawing of sword surrounded by flowers, it had completely escaped Adora that she was wearing it. Well, her mind had been elsewhere the past few days. And it had been while since she’d done laundry. “Bow bought it for me for secret santa last year.” muttered Adora, rubbing her arm.

“Ha, um, okay, Princess. You know your chest looks full on like Kyle when he sunburned.” she chuckled as Adora’s chin dipped further in attempt to look at her chest.

 _Son of a bitch!_ Yep, bright, blushing red. _Why does this keep happening?_ _Does the Universe just hate me?_

Then another thought occurred when she looked up to find Catra still gazing at her ‘sunburn.’ _Is she looking at my chest? No! Is she- She’s looking at my boobs! Ha! Suck it Universe! Adora wins!_ There was no concrete proof that Catra wasn’t actually just zoning out while trying to think of more Kyle-driven insults, but there was a glassy look in her eyes that Adora knew all too well. She’d seen in the eyes of one too many girls. Besides that, Adora really needed this victory.

Catra’s eyes fluttered up and she coughed; oh right, there was something she wanted to say. “Look, I was thinking… about your illustration offer.”

“Really?!” Adora pushed herself off the display case and almost collided head on with the smell of cinnamon. If she had tripped onto Catra, her lack of keeping it together would probably have resulted in a violent death for the both of them. “I mean, oh.” She sounded like Bow trying to cover up a voice crack.

“You don’t have to play it cool Princess, I’m the one who’s been stringing you along for four fucking days.” She said, poking Adora’s shoulder.

“If you need more time to think about-”

“I wanna do it.”

“-I don’t mind waiting a couple more days- wait, huh? Did you just say you _want_ to do it?”

Catra rolled her eyes in response. “Duh! It would just be straight up stupid to turn down the money and it’s not like I have job opportunities jumping out at me!”

“And you’d be okay working with-with me?” Adora was still having trouble believing anything she was hearing. Anything past the titty victory was just, beyond her.

“Okay, first of all _you’re_ the one making that sound like that’s hell on earth, not me. Two, I don’t think you can pull this off without me.” She put her hands on her hips, just smug enough to be cute.

“Em, okay. We’ll see if you can hold your own. She-Ra is kinda like my baby and so long as you’re sure you won’t mess her up.” Adora teased with a shoulder poke of her own.

But teasing backfired, blowing up in Adora’s face spectacularly. Catra’s expression soured and she shrugged Adora’s off. “I’m not like a professional or anything, okay Adora? I can’t do anything that fancy.”

“Catra that’s okay-”

“Like I can’t doing anything digital and I’m honestly not good at fucking landscape. I mean I could take a class, but who has the god damn mother fucking time?” Adora grabbed Catra’s wrist without thinking. She just couldn’t let Catra spiral so violently until she was just as plagued with self doubt as Adora was.

“Catra, I don’t care! I- I don’t know what I’m doing either! And hey, together, maybe we could figure it out?” Adora trailed off. Catra’s gaze went from their hands to her face.

“Pfft, okay whatever.” With that, she took her hand back. Adora tried not to dwell on the soft  feel of her skin. She was trying not be creepy, okay?

“And like I said, if we don’t get published, you don’t have to follow through on our deal. I mean, you never really had to but I just wanted to remind you before you’re really, really on board that there is a good chance we’re not getting published.” the words flew out of her mouth with impressive speed and Adora found herself inhaling sharply afterwards.

Catra crossed her arms and leaned onto the display case, wrapping a curl around her finger. “ _That_ is a problem for future Catra and Adora.”

Biting her lip, Adora stifled a laugh and just took her friend in. They were getting closer, weren’t they? Closer to what they had before Mara came and adopted Adora. Of course, she had to accept deep down, that they were never going to be what they were before that fateful day in January 2006. But this, Catra teasing and laughing and smiling with her instead of snarling and mocking and hurting, had to be reminiscent of what they had all those years ago. Adora wasn’t ready to give up on that idea- on them- just yet.

“Oh for fuck’s sake I just realized I’m going to have to draw myself as cat.” Catra turned to glare at Adora, but Adora was too busy laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Laughter started to spill from Catra’s own lips, as hard as she tried to keep her jaw clenched, until she was red in the face too.

“Who’s the furry now?” Adora managed between deep steadying breathes and Catra whacked her on the shoulder.

“You did this on purpose!” she growled, but it was all play and no malice. By the time they pulled themselves together, Adora’s back had started sweating. And Catra had finally caught onto the temperature change. “Why’s it so fucking hot in here?” she asked, shrugging her jacket off.

_Yes! I DID IT! I AM A GENIUS!_

Entrapta was right. There were two on each of her shoulders. But Adora had also been right, too. Catra had been holding out on her.

Her movements were quick, swift, as she tied the leather jacket around her waist and Adora caught sight of one tattoo then the other, her arms finally coming to rest when she crossed them and turned back with a bored look on her face. “Ugh, it’s gross in here Adora!” she whined just as Sea Hawk asked Mermista “If it was hot in here or is it just you?”

The next sound was Sea Hawk getting whacked by what was probably Frosta’s hoodie again, probably by Mermista. “Uh huh.” Adora wasn’t sure just who she was replying to. She was too busy staring at Catra’s surprisingly ripped arms and reveling in her victory.

 _Huh, for all her talk about me taking her name too seriously, she has_ three _cat tattoos._

High on her right shoulder, a bright eyed kitten lay hovering above lithe brown skin, covered in a glow of sweat. This tattoo read like one of Catra’s actual drawings as if it had done by pencil and charcoal instead of needles and ink, but Adora couldn’t help but wonder if it read like Catra herself, or if she was reading too much into. The left side of the sweet kitten’s face carried emphasis and detail, shaded and softly kissing her skin. But the right side faded into harsh lines, built by jagged and sharp edges, until most of her sweet face had become negative space.

The eyes, marked by the whispering touch of white ink, held such innocence and beauty, as if begging not to be sucked away into oblivion.

Adora blink at the drama of that last observation. Her face scrunching up, Adora couldn’t help but wonder if she needed to write a little less and sleep a little more.

“Are you two making bracelets?” Frosta was asking behind them.

“We’re bored.” Mermista replied, her tone conveying as much.

“Sea Hawk your bracelet is really lovely.” commented Perfuma.

“Why thank you Perfuma!” Sea Hawk’s booming voice had everyone jumping in their own sweats and Catra whirling around, her left arm now facing Adora. _Thank you Sea Hawk._ “Being an expert sailor allows the knots in my bracelet to be extra beautiful! Mermista, my love, can you pass the coral blue string.”

Leaning her back on the display case, Catra narrowed her eyes and watched Sea Hawk and Mermista engage in not their weirdest hobby (Adora was pretty sure, at least from following them on Instagram, that they were raising seahorses together and that the seahorses were all named after different hollywood Chris actors) Adora narrowed her own eyes and stared at Catra’s other tattoo, one that seemed to be an antithesis to the wide eye kitten on her right shoulder.

This tattoo was much lower on her arm, positioned right over her elbow. A small tabby outlined in staunch black lines took the center, eyes red, expansive angry. It sat waiting and patient. Surrounding the cat ready for the kill, was a lioness, etched in a bright white, a double image of her likeness in red. Power, her eyes screamed, her claws digging into pores and her mouth set and ready to roar. All the while the young cat sat protected in her center, tail curling and meeting the tail of her lioness, of her protector.

 _Damn._ Adora’s breath caught.

Fortunately for Adora, Catra’s attention was on her table of friends. But Adora’s fortune did not last long.

“Didn’t know things got boring enough around Sparkletown for you guys to start making friendship bracelets.” Catra’s sarcasm had come back in full force, with a side of snark.

“Well usually things aren’t so _weird_ around here.” Frosta dished right back out, twisting in her seat to turn her icy glare on Catra.

“Uh, Sea Hawk did you take all my purple beads?”

“Yes, because you weren’t using them and my bracelet needed a splash of color.”

“Why don’t you both just share the beads- Oh my gosh! You have other tattoos, Catra! They’re so beautiful!” gasped Perfuma.

“Huh-” Catra looked down like she had forgotten the permanent markings on her body had even existed in the first place and her hands fell to the jacket that was no longer on her arms. “ _Shit.”_

 _Okay, now I kinda feel bad,_ Adora thought to herself as she felt the beginnings of serious regret. Adora _knew_ the tattoos were personal; it was plain as day they all carried heavy significance. If Catra wanted to show them off, show her own skill off- and _those_ muscles would have had a bigger impact on Adora than any leather jacket ever would have- than she would without her jacket. All this time she thought Catra hid her tattoos to hide herself, to guard herself out of semblance of shame. But it wasn’t shame. Her secrecy had come from self reverence. Something she had a right to. And Adora had been so, so selfish.

_And right after she agreed to work with you! To do art for your stupid book! Why don’t you ever think Adora?!_

Just as she could things starting to click in Catra’s eyes, Glimmer started shouting from the kitchen again. “WHO! TOUCHED! MY! THERMOSTAT?” Adora’s stomach dropped.

“Sea Hawk, you didn’t.” seethed Mermista, but her not-boyfriend threw up his hands. Asa result, beads went flying everywhere.

“It-it wasn’t me! I wouldn’t go back in the kitchen with Glimmer even in the name of the most glorious adventure! Also, my dear Mermista, I _haven’t_ moved since we sat down!”

Frosta scoffed. “How do we know you didn’t do it when you were quote ‘trying to fix the oven-”

“He didn’t do it.” Catra interrupted her, her voice low. The four of them, Sea Hawk gasping loud enough for all for them, whipped around to look at her as she peeled herself off the glass of the display case and turned to Adora. “Adora did.”

Her raging guilt aside, Adora found herself putting her own hands on her hips. It wasn’t very smart to stand her ground, not with Catra. But Adora wasn’t very smart when it came to Catra, like she’d start now. And bad habits were bad habits.

Frosta snorted. “Why would Adora turn the thermostat up?”

“Oh you don’t believe me?” Catra scoffed, “I seriously doubt Rainbow over here wants to sweat and Trapta _hates_ the heat and the only other person in the kitchen was Adora. _Adora_ thinks-” she stopped, the accusing finger she’d been waving at Adora folded back into a fist. Catra’s expression was unreadable.

“What? What do I think?” Adora held her chin even. If this was how it went down, ending in flames and them tearing out each others hair, then at least time Catra wouldn’t remember Adora as a coward.

“Adora-” she started walking towards her, her tank top riding up her stomach, but she didn’t get to start with whatever callout she had for Adora. A strangled mix of cry and gasp echoed through the awkward heat of the restaurant, and Adora looked to see horror in Perfuma’s eyes. Catra’s eyes went wide.

“Your back-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-” Perfuma covered her mouth with shaking hands as Catra turned on her heel faster than lightning could strike. Frosta grabbed her arm as Perfuma’s face turned a chalky white.

 _Her back?_ Adora’s heart skipped a beat, confusion tearing at her thoughts. _What_ was going on? But as she looked up to see a mass of black curls instead of an angry, betrayed split eyes, confusion didn’t stay with her for much longer.

“Oh that.” Catra spit, throwing a glance over her shoulder. But Adora wasn’t listening; Adora couldn’t look away. Her knees went weak, her lungs compressing and that all too familiar sensation that a hand had grabbed her heart and had no plans to let go had trapped her. Her vision blurred, her brain screaming at her senses- _Ground yourself, Adora! You’re just having a panic attack It’s not real!_ But- it was real. It was right in front of her. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the twisted, grotesque mix of yellow and pink skin that spread on Catra’s back like an infection. Her tank rode up when she bent down, Adora could no longer blink of breath, as Catra held Perfuma’s chin up with a single stiletto claw and whispered. “Not everything on my body is beautiful, Princess.”

Another whimper escaped Perfuma as Catra dropped her chin and turned back with a victorious smirk on her face. But it was all so... far away. Adora was far away. The bakery was fading and something was taking its place, invading her mind like a dense, inescapable fog. _This isn’t real!_ A voice within pleaded, the voice that had been trained to pull her from the water and to be her life line when she was drowning. The voice that sounded like Mara. _You’re safe, Adora it’s not real._

But it was real. It had been real. This wasn’t some deeply disturbed anecdote she’d dreamed up in the middle of another sleepless night, it was a memory that she had carried and hid in the deepest parts of her subconscious. All these years she had kept it locked away, hid the memory in a mental safe and destroyed the key. But Catra’s scar. She’d seen it now. The memory had been unlocked.

Now Adora couldn’t breathe or feel or think anything otherwise. It was pulling at her, and as hard she fought, she knew fought in vain. This memory, the living nightmare born of reality, was going to win and it was going to pull her down until she drowned in it.

“Adora?” A voice- it sounded like Catra- or someone she couldn’t think anymore, called out to her from far away. “Adora!” A cry from above the water, someone reaching in and grabbing her arm, nails digging into her skin to try and pull her back, to give her any semblance of feeling, but Adora was disappearing. Her breathing became shallow, her limbs shaking, all sense draining until there was nothing. Nothing. Her grip on what was real snapped like a string pulled too taut, and with one final call of her name, the past sucked her in.

 _“_ Adora! _”_

___

_“-Adora!”_

_A laugh slipped from her lips, and Adora sunk lower behind the boxes she was hiding behind._

_“Adora! I counted all the way to thirty, and I did your dumb Mississippi thing. Come out, I know you’re down here, I can you hear you laughing.” Catra’s footsteps echoed through the basement as she ran barefoot down the cement stairs. “Ugh this place is so creepy! Why did you pick down_ here _to hide? You’re gonna get Whiskers all dirty.”_

_Adora clutched Whiskers against her chest. Maybe Catra would get spooked and turn back, leaving Adora the winner. She was, afterall, the all time champion of hide-n-seek, even though they hadn't played hide-n-seek since they were eight, but Adora wanted to keep it that way. Blowing her cheeks up to hold her breath, Adora listened for any signs that her friend was getting closer._

_“Gross, dumb Kyle’s blood is still down here-” A loud, groan like that of a monster from a scary movie came from the water heater- one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, four mississippi, - before it hissed like always, and Catra yelped. “Um, Adora, the water heater’s making that freaky noise again, we should get out of here!”_

_Adora was sure Catra was turn around now. For years the water heater had been their own personal monster in the basement, making noises that filled the whole house sometimes. It freaked Catra out, just like now. She’d be a scaredy-cat and Adora would win, even if her face was starting to turn blue._

_“Boo!”_

_“Ah!” Adora jumped, her butt hitting cold concrete as she landed and Whiskers went flying from her hands. Above her, Catra’s mane of unkempt curls hung above her and she caught the stuffed animal with one hand. “Catra!”_

_“Ha-ha, I win!” she taunted as Adora lifted herself over the boxes._

_“By cheating.” she said, kicking Catra’s leg. Her friend hissed and elbowed Adora in the ribs, making Adora wince._

_“Uh, how was that cheating? I won back Whiskers fair and square! Right Whiskers? Told you Mommy would get you back!” she touched her nose to the toy’s, scratching his pretend fur with her long nails._

_Adora crossed her arms. She just couldn’t believe Catra sometimes. “You said_ I _was Whiskers mom!”_

 _“We can_ both _be his moms, dummy!” Catra stuck her tongue out, shoving Whiskers back in Adora’s arms._

_“Okay.” That was a good compromise. And Moms probably shouldn’t be fighting over their kids, so Adora decided she’d let Catra get away with kicking her and cheating. “So what do you want to do now-”_

_Again, the water heater emitted a deep, scary moan- one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, four mississippi, five mississi- then another whistle of steam from one of the pipes. Adora jumped again, pulling Catra by the arm closer. “Scaredy cat.” Catra teased and Adora stuck out her tongue. “Why do you think it’s making that creepy noise?”_

_“Uh,” Adora tried to think of a smart response, “it’s probably broken. Or malfunctioning.” She just learned that word for their last spelling test, which she got a perfect score on._

_“Rogelio said that sometimes water heaters explode! A kid from down the street told him that.” Catra’s eyes lit up, “Like, they go through the whole house and into the sky like a freaking rocket! How cool is that, Adora?”_

_“That’s not cool, that’s dangerous!” Adora told her, the water heater pipe hissing again to back her up._

_“Where do you think we would live if the water heater blew up our house?”_

_“Our house is not going to blow up!” Adora pinched her arm and Catra yelped, “Mrs. Weaver is going to fix it, see all the tools?”_

_Catra just rolled her eyes at the sight of Mrs. Weaver’s tool bag. That was fair. It only had two wrenches, a screwdriver and some duct tape. “Like that dumb witch can fix anything.”_

_“Catra! Don’t be so rude!”_

_“Fine.” she growled, “Like that big fat meanie-”_

_“Catra-” the water heated moaned again- 1 mississippi, 2 mississipi, 3 mississipi- and the door to the basement creaked open. A shadow loomed at the top of stairs._

_“He dried up all of my money,_ my _money, and expects me to fix this all on my own? With nothing! Haven’t I done enough for that man? He has everything while I_ rot _in this hell hole-”_

_“It’s Mrs. Weaver!” squeaked Catra._

_“Hide!” Adora whispered, pulling her towards the pile of boxes that had previously been her hiding place._

_“Are you going to listen to me tonight?” Mrs. Weaver had made it down the stairs. Adora’s stomach dropped. Had she seen them? That was something she said to the other kids sometimes. A clink of wrench against concrete told Adora it was safe to sneak a peek. “Dumb bucket of bolts! Garbage!” Oh. She was yelling at the water heater._

_“Adora,” Catra tugged at her sleeve, and asked in a whisper “what do we do?”_

_Adora sunk behind the boxes and reached out for Catra’s hand. Catra was right there to take it. “Uh, I can get us out of here, we just have to get to the stairs.”_

_“And how do we do that? She’ll see us! And then she’ll kill me!” cried Catra. Adora swallowed, and Catra dug her nails further into her arm. Looking back over the boxes, she watched as Mrs. Weaver murmured something to herself and dug through her bag. She pulled out a roll of silver duct tape that reflected in the basement light._

_“I- I won’t let her. Okay? She’s distracted and she’s busy with the water heater. So we run when she turns around.”_

_The water heater hissed again. A rip of the duct tape, and Mrs. Weaver turned her back to tape up the breaking pipe. “On three, okay?” Adora whispered, putting Whiskers in Catra’s hands. She could keep him safe. Catra nodded._

_“One…”_

_“Useless piece of junk!”_

_“Two…”_

_A moan. A groan. A hiss silenced by the wrangle of tape._

_“Three- go!”_

_They were off, running at the fastest speed they could manage with the lightest footsteps, Adora pulling Catra forward. Almost there. Almost to the steps. And then they could run and escape even if she saw them. Almost there. Almost there-_

_“Whiskers!” shouted Catra. The stuffed animal stumbled from Catra’s grasp. She let go of Adora to run back from him._

_“Catra no-”_

_“What are you doing down here?” Mrs. Weaver’s shouts paralyzed Catra where she stood. “You are supposed to be in bed, or has your stupidity gotten the best of you once again?”_

_Wincing, Catra covered her face “I-uh-”_

_“Have you not the sense to be obedient for one night? Or must I remind you myself what is to happen when you step out of  line?” her voice boomed and shook the room like an earthquake. She yanked Catra by the sleeve of her shirt and pulled her forward._

_“Mrs. Weaver! Please stop!” Adora’s voice shook. She’d never been so scared. Mrs. Weaver eyes were red, the veins in her forehead popping, and her nostrils flared. Had she ever looked this angry before?_

_This was a nightmare right? She’d wake up. Right?_

_“Adora,” their caretaker’s voice fell soft, “go upstairs. This doesn’t concern you.”_

_Adora blinked, and steam was enveloping Mrs. Weaver’s maroon skirt. What has happening? Why was the water heater making that noise? “Insolent child! I gave you everything! I took you when you were nothing and sacrificed everything so you could stay here! To pay a debt! And what have you become? A waste! You’ve always been a_ humiliating _waste!”_

_“Please-” a terrible screeching began to fill the air. Adora clasped her hands over her ears. The steam began to fill the air like smoke. Below the screams of the pipe, the water heated sung. 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, 3 mississippi, 4 mississippi..._

_“Mrs. Weaver-” the screeching got higher, it got louder and the basement floor underneath shook underneath her bare feet._

_5 mississippi, 6 mississippi, 7 mississippi._

_“It wasn’t enough that Adora cared for you, you selfish brat?” the screeching was getting louder, 8 mississippi, 9 mississippi, 10. “You’re nothing, nothing but a nuisance! And I’ve had it with you!” the shaking getting worse, 11 mississippi, 12 mississippi, 13 mississippi. “Why waste anything on you when you’ll just end up like-” the pipe burst at fourteen seconds. It just couldn’t hold any longer. Adora watched as a stream of water hit Mrs. Weaver’s arm. Screaming, she yanked Catra closer and Adora shut her eyes. “You terrible, disobedient girl! You did this!”_

_Adora looked up, her trembling hands still on her ears. She should’ve looked away._

_Mrs. Weaver roared and pushed Catra into the stream of the water, holding her against the current even though Catra tried to fight her. “No!” Adora tried to shout, but her voice was lost in the deafening sounds of Catra’s screams as boiling water hit her back._

_A for the longest time, all she could hear was Catra’s pained and strangled screaming._

_1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, 3 mississippi, 4 mississippi, 5 mississippi, 6 mississippi, 7 mississippi, 8 mississippi, 9 mississippi, 10 mississippi... That’s how long she screamed until her body hit the floor._

_“Get up! Please get up!” Catra didn’t move._

_But Adora did. “Catra!” she sobbed as she bolted from the stairs. She’d never run faster. Never skinned her knees as hard as she slid onto the floor and into the boiling water. The heat hurt, made her want to scream, but she still crawled to Catra. Tears ran down her face and made it hard to see, but she still picked Catra’s head up and cradled her like a doll. “Catra! Wake up, please! Please!”_

_This was a nightmare right? She’d open her eyes and Catra would be on her bed, hugging Whiskers and hogging their blue blanket. Catra would jolt awake and be mad at Adora for waking her up. Adora would just tease her for being eleven and still sleeping with a stuffed animal. Right?_

_A scream ripped through her throat when she saw Catra’s back. The force of the water had ripped open her shirt. It had been so hot it had melted it to her, blending in with charred black and the bright red of muscle. Adora held her head closer, rocking, saying her name. That- that was her spine. That was her skeleton. The water burned through skin. All of it._

_“Oh God, oh God,” Mrs. Weaver cried from behind them._

_“Help her!” Adora screamed through tears. “Call 9-1-1!” That was what they were supposed to do right? And Mrs. Weaver would know their location and she could tell them what was wrong. Right?_

_But she stayed there, frozen and horrified, her words becoming a jumble. Why wasn’t she moving? And then it occurred to Adora that Mrs. Weaver couldn’t help them. Adora would have to do this by herself._

_“Catra, hey, wake up! I’m- I’m gonna get help, just-” Adora reached out for Catra’s hand, intertwining their fingers. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise, okay?”_

_“Adora?” her eyes peeled open._

_“I’ve got you, it’s okay. I’ll get help-” she looked around, for anything, for anyone, and gasped when she saw Lonnie, Rogelio, and Kyle on the stairs, holding back the other forster kids. The noise of the pipe exploding must have brought them down. “Lonnie! Catra- she’s burned, really badly! I need you to call 9-1-1! Hurry!” Lonnie nodded and bolted back up the stairs. “Rogelio, I need you to help me carry her upstairs. Get down here now!” Then Rogelio and Kyle were flying down, Rogelio coming to Adora’s to grab Catra’s legs._

_“What happened?” Rogelio screamed, seeing her burn._

_“The pipe-” she panted, “it just exploded.”_

_Kyle ran up behind Adora’s shoulder. “Is she breathing?”_

_“I- I think so. If she’s not,_ I’m _going to kill her.”_

_“How-” stuttered Rogelio._

_“Just help me! We need get her up the stairs,_ now! _Before the ambulance gets here.” Adora ordered._

_“What should I do? I can help, Adora!” Kyle reached out to help carry, but almost touched Catra’s burn, until Adora snapped at him._

_“Don’t touch her!” It was now oozing and swelling and Adora couldn’t look at it any longer. “Just grab Whiskers! The- her stuffed animal.”_

_Kyle did as he was told, pulling a drenched Whiskers from the pool of water. Mrs. Weaver just stood there, clutching her arm._

_Her burn was worse- the red going deeper and the oozing get worse- by the time Adora and Rogelio got her up the stairs. Rogelio spoke to Catra in a soft voice as Adora tried not to cry. It sounded like Spanish, but in her panicked state she couldn’t recognize any words. Even after all those nights Catra spent teaching her._

_“They’re coming!” Lonnie was at the door when the emerged from the basement. And sure enough, the telltale sound of a siren flooded the neighborhood._

_“They’re coming, Catra,” She took her previous position holding her head as Rogelio laid her down sideways on their battered couch. “They’re gonna fix this. I promise.”_

_1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, 3 mississippi, 4 mississippi, 5 mississippi, 6 mississippi, 7 mississippi, 8 mississippi, 9 mississippi, 10 mississippi, 11 mississippi, 12 mississippi, 13 mississippi, 14 mississippi, 15 mississippi..._

_Adora touched her forehead to Catra’s. Kyle placed Whiskers in Adora’s hand and nodded at her. “It’ll be okay, Adora. Don’t worry.”_

_19 mississippi, 20 mississippi, 21 mississippi, 22 mississippi, 23 mississippi, 24 mississippi, 25 mississippi, 26 mississippi, 27 mississippi, 28 mississippi, 29 mississippi, 30 mississippi, 31 mississippi-_

_The screen door flew open after 32 seconds. and Adora found herself surrounded by a sea of doctors. Paramedics. Also a word on her last spelling test._

_“What happened here?” they all asked, one of them ripping Catra’s body from Adora._

_“A pipe exploded! In the basement! It burned her!” Rogelio shouted out. Adora was too busy following the people that had taken her best friend to answer the questions they threw at her._

_“Where are the adults in the place?”_

_“Do you kids have parents?”_

_“What’s her name?”_

_“I think we’re looking at third, maybe fourth degree burns.”_

_“Still breathing. Stay with us honey.”_

_Adora’s bare feet barely touched the grass as she ran after Catra. They were loading her in an ambulance. “Wait for me!”_

_“No.” Mrs. Weaver came out of nowhere, grabbing her by her shirt collar. “Stay here Adora.”_

_“Are you this girl’s guardian?” one of the paramedics asked Mrs. Weaver._

_“Yes, I’m in charge of her.” Adora squirmed and wrestled trying to out of her guardian’s grasp, but Mrs. Weaver did not let go._

_The paramedic lifted himself onto the ambulance. They were going to leave without her. “We’re going to need to take her to the hospital.”_

_“Oh, is that- is that really necessary?” Why did Mrs. Weaver sound so scared? Catra needed to go, she could die! “This is quite the overreaction to a minor injury. She’ll be fine in my care.”_

_The paramedic just stared at her. “Um ma’am, this is really serious. We take her with or without your consent.”_

_“No!” shouted Mrs. Weaver. Adora found her opportunity, yanked herself away and made a jump for the ambulance._

_“Please! Please take me! This was my fault, I can’t- I can’t leave her.” her own tears burst from a pipe of their own. She grabbed onto the paramedic’s uniform, Mrs. Weaver’s protests somewhere in the background. “Please, she’s my best friend.”_

_“Are we even allowed?”_

_“If the woman isn’t going to come-”_

_“Dude, Phil we have to go, just bring the girl!”_

_And then the paramedic was hoisting Adora into the ambulance, Mrs. Weaver yelling and screaming, but they were driving away. Phil closed the doors, and Adora saw all the other kids, all their other friends running after them, waving. The siren started up again, bathing Mrs. Weaver in red and blue light. Adora tried to wipe away her tears, but they wouldn’t stop coming. Not this time._

_They had laid her on her back, keeping the wound exposed but Adora wanted to look at anything other than the festering burn. Another paramedic, a woman with kind brown eyes was stroking Catra’s hair. Without asking for anyone’s permissions, Adora laced her fingers with Catra’s again._

_“Adora?” croaked Catra. Her eyes had opened again._

_“Hey Catra.” she forced a smile. “It’s going to be okay. Don’t leave me, okay? Please don’t leave me.” Adora sobbed, pressing her forehead to Catra’s once more._

_Then someone took her hand. It was the paramedic with pretty brown eyes. “Oh honey, she’ll be fine. Don’t you worry. This one? She’s tough.”_

_“Yeah. She is.” Adora chuckled, and wiped away her snot with her elbow._

_“Who’s this?” the brown eyed woman pointed to Whiskers._

_“Whiskers. He’s our son.”_

_The woman chuckled. “Okay. Well why don’t we put him here so he can by a good son and keep her company. Oh, he’s wet.”_

_“Catra,” Adora said as she laid Whiskers beside her head, “if you leave me and I have to be a single mother and raise our son alone, I will be so mad!”_

_Catra squeezed her hand and smiled weakly. “Whatever Adora…”_

_“Adora….”_

_“Adora-”_

_“Adora!”_

“Adora!”

_

“Adora?” Glimmer’s voice was quiet when Adora came to.

Panting, Adora’s blinking became rapid, her mind and body confused and heavy. She isn’t- she isn’t in an ambulance anymore. The bright white light of moving vehicle had morphed back into familiar soft, golden light. The blazing sirens were no longer ringing in her ears, it was just quiet music coming from the speaker. Where- where was she?

Oh. Adora pressed her shaking hands to her temple. The bakery. She was in the bakery.

“Adora, can you hear me?” asked Glimmer, tugging at her arm.

But it’s just- it’s just too much. Adora yanked her arm from her friend’s light grasp. Looking up, she saw the waiting faces of her others friends. Mermista clutching Sea Hawk, Perfuma holding her hand over her mouth, Frosta wringing her the sleeves of her hoodies. And Catra. Catra stood with her arm out, keeping them from swarming her. Granting her space because from the look in her eyes, Adora knew that she knew. She understood all too well what Adora was thinking, what Adora was feeling. Afterall, Catra had been there.

“Adora please,” Bow whispered from somewhere behind her, “you can talk to us.”

But could she? Bow and Glimmer, the others- they weren’t there. They didn’t watch Catra’s body fall limp to the floor, they didn’t watch her trusted guardian turn her back for fear of the consequences she _should have_ faced. _Adora_ carried the weight of that moment, no one else. It would be ignorant to believe they could fathom the pain of what she witnessed, of what she had so obviously failed to process. Dr. Hope was trained in _trauma response_ and even in all her expertise she couldn’t pull the truth from Adora. Neither could Mara. No one knew the whole story like she did. Looking at all the people she loved, feeling Bow and Glimmer take her hands, she couldn’t- she _wouldn’t-_ burden them like that.

Every breath she took was like moving a mountain. The memories had ceased, but the panic was just beginning. It was like this nightmare was far from over. “Adora? Hey-”

“I need some air.” the words, forced, rushed from her mouth as she ripped her body from her only real family and pushed through a wall of support and love. Breaking down in front of them just wasn’t an option. Adora knew when she was about to have a major break down, and she knew this was going to be a brutal round of picking up the pieces after she fell to the floor. That was no one’s job but her own. Her friends may have loved her, but love and understanding were not always the same thing.

“Adora, please!” Perfuma cried out, and Adora started running for the door, the only exit. Please, she only needed to breathe.

“Don’t go-” Frosta tried to reach out but she already pushing open the door, letting the cool air meet her skin. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

“Adora!” Glimmer called out one last time. But just as Adora ran out the door, she heard Catra stop Glimmer in her tracks.

“No.” her voice was steady, “Let her go.”

The door closed behind Adora and she slunk to the brick wall to hold her up. Her breathing turned to wrangled sobs, but she just let them tear through her as she limped. If she could’ve, Adora would’ve sprinted. Run as fast as her legs could carry her, but all the energy had drained from her shaking limbs, and all she could do was fall to the pavement in the back alley. Then she could cry, hug her knees to her chest, bite back a scream, and wait it out.

Her thoughts rang of a faint _How am I supposed to go back in there and face them?_ but her mind was a chaotic mess of thoughts begging for more attention. Adora bit her lip and didn’t stop until her mouth tasted of salt and blood. How could have she forgotten that? And how, after all these years, did that memory stay perfectly preserved, every detail, every emotion, every scream and every siren? She counted every second, and she _remembered_ counting every second.

Adora had failed. It was supposed to be her and Catra against the world, and instead Adora just stood there while Weaver almost killed her. Why hadn’t she stopped it? Because she was what- afraid? Catra was hurting, and Adora let her fear stop her from doing the right thing. Adora had let her fear tear them apart.

She had to laugh at that. All her life she wondered where her fear stayed rooted, why sprang up like weeds throughout every interaction and torn her away from the things- and the people- she loved. Every room she entered, she looked for an exist. Anyone in the room, she kept them in her line of sight somehow. Adora jumped when the air conditioning came on in the apartment, punched and kicked people who surprised her, and beat her body until she was physically strong in every way. Now she understood why. Her failure of that night haunted her even if she wasn’t aware that it did. Catra wouldn’t carry a permanent reminder of her abuse if Adora had _stopped_ being afraid. If only Adora had overcome her fear, where would they be now?

Catra hated Adora because she had left. But Adora hated _herself_ because she was afraid, and she had always been afraid. When Mrs. Weaver was screaming at Catra, when she was hitting her, keeping her food and clothes from her, Adora stood on the sidelines, engulfed by fear. It was all her fault, wasn’t it? Deep down on some unconscious level, Adora understood that, and that’s why she could never let it happen again. It’s why she dragged herself out of bed to open for Glimmer, why she covered for Bow despite her evident exhaustion, because if they failed, they would hurt, and Adora would have failed once again to prevent something so blatantly preventable.

Adora didn’t know how long she stayed there in the shadows and silence. But she figured if she stayed where she was just long enough, she would disappear. Maybe she’d fade to nothing, become the brick, the pavement. Although it sounded like such a cruel way to run away, it was a better option than going back in and facing them. Facing her.

 _How can she even stand the sight of me?_ Adora winced at the thought, a new wave of tears ravaging her. _Why doesn’t she hate me?_ But the truth was, Adora had no proof that she didn’t.

A scrape of sound of the sidewalk had Adora lifting her head from her arms. Adrenaline kicked in once more, and Adora felt her muscles tensing involuntarily. _Maybe it’s nothing._ Adora held her breath.

But more footsteps followed. “Adora?” Catra. Adora’s finger dug into her skin as she clutched her chest, Catra had followed her, and she wasn’t sure if the razor sharp pain her heart was longing or guilt. “I know you’re back there, I can hear you crying.”

Praying the darkness concealed her pathetic tantrum, Adora curled further in on herself. The words “Please go away,” sat on her tongue, but they never went anywhere.

Then the only stream of light that was pouring into the alley became blocked by a a shadow. “Dude… you look like shit.”

“Oh, so you think this is funny?” Adora pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes, hoping that would stop the infinite supply of tears she didn’t know she even had.

“No.” her voice was soft. “No I don’t.”

Adora looked up and blinked away tears. Catra carried an expression of worry, one Adora had not seen in a long time, and not since they’d been reunited. But she kept walking towards Adora. “You scared everyone back there.”

“It’s just a panic attack. I get them all the time.” Adora wiped the river of snot from underneath her nose.

“That,” retorted Catra, “that was _not_ a panic attack Adora. That was a fucking flashback.”

Hugging herself, Adora took a shaky breath. She knew Catra was right, it was just easier to pass this off as the devil she knew instead of the devil she didn’t. Dr. Hope and Mara had thrown around a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder just as they had thrown around depression and anxiety, but Adora never wanted to accept it. Mara thought it would help Adora understand what had happened to her. Adora never thought that what had happened to her was anything beyond normal, that stuff like that happened to everyone else. Only when she realized that Mara wanted her to sleep by herself because twelve years old slept alone did she think that maybe something was wrong with her.

 _“There’s nothing_ wrong _with you Adora.”_ Mara emphasized after Adora spent the whole night awake, afraid to sleep by herself. _“Something bad_ happened _to you.”_ Adora never really did see it that way. Normal kids didn’t have her problems, and stuff happened to them. As for her trauma, there was always someone, usually in Adora’s direct proximity, who had had it worse.

“C’mon, let’s get you up. You really think Bow would be happy if you got your lesbian sword t-shirt dirty?” Catra’s mouth lifted up in a smile and she extended her arm.

 _And if I don’t take her hand?_ a small voice asked inside her. Adora was beyond confused as to why Catra had followed her out in the first place when she’d stopped everyone else from doing the same thing. Part of Adora wanted to remain where she was, and go through the motions of her panic alone like she’d always done, but the other part of her didn’t want to sit in the dark anymore. So she took Catra’s hand.

“So what did you see in there?” Now that Adora was standing, she expected Catra to let her go. Instead she just squeezed her hand. Her voice was warm, full of an understanding that was foreign to Adora.

“The accident.” Adora replied in a hoarse whisper. Her throat ached.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Catra looked to the side. “Sometimes I forget that it’s not something everyone thinks about everyday, since I’ve been stuck with it.”

“I didn’t think,” Adora’s voice caught, “I didn’t think I remembered all of that.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“You don’t?” looking up, Adora caught Catra’s eyes before she looked away.

“The memory is pretty fucking blurry and that’s both a blessing and a curse. I sort of remember the water heater breaking and then there’s nothing until you balling your eyes out in the ambulance, and then I remember waking up in a hospital bed. But I don’t even remember why I was down there in the basement.”

Adora swallowed. “It was because of me.”

“Huh?”

“We were playing and- and we shouldn’t have been down there in the first place but I thought I could get away with hiding down there but she caught us. And it wasn’t the water heater, it was a pipe connected to the water heater and she was trying to fix it when she found us and- and she got angry. She took it out on you and then the pipe broke.” Adora faltered. It was strange that all this time Catra thought the _water heater_ had broken. After Catra came out of surgery, she was assigned a caseworker from social services, who, upon learning that Catra came from a foster home and had been hurt by accident in the house, sent investigators to Weaver’s orphanage. Adora could still remember hearing the people from social services whisper about it: hundreds of safety violations that should have discredited their status as a foster home, from mold to lead paint to a water heater so out of date and so unsafe given just the temperature of the water. But the case worker needed Adora to testify against Mrs. Weaver if they were to bring charges of child abuse. She was the only one who had seen everything after all. But when Adora left the case worker’s office, Mrs. Weaver was at the hospital and she was waiting for her. Taking Adora in her arms, she whispered “ _Think of all I have done for you. I can protect you, Adora. Who else can you give you the future you deserve?”_

Adora refused to testify because why would she send someone she loved to jail, right? Hordak took care of the rest. Social Services terminated their investigation shortly after Catra was released back into Weaver’s care.

“It was _my_ fault, Catra. Everything. I’m the reason you got hurt, I’m the reason the case was dropped, I’m the reason Mrs. Weaver hated you.” she was sobbing so hard it hurt. She couldn’t even look Catra in the eye anymore, let alone touch her. So she pulled her hand away. “It was all my fault.”

“I have waited thirteen years to hear you say that.” Catra’s words were barely audible. Still, it hurt more than any physical blow from her could have ever.

“What?”

“All I ever wanted was for you to understand that,” her voice broke, “and now I’m hearing you say it, and god damn it! It isn’t what I wanted! I don’t want this anymore and now I’m so lost!”

“Catra, I- I’m confused.”

“I was so _angry_ at you Adora. I was so angry at- at fucking everything! Because it was easier than being confused all the damn time. And now it’s like I was so wrong about everything.” Catra shouted.

Adora shook her head. “You aren’t wrong, you were the only one who has ever been right-”

“No, just _listen_ to me Adora!” she yelled. “You’re not the only one who has spent the last three weeks rethinking our entire childhood. If you had tried to stop Mrs. Weaver, then we both would have gotten hurt by that stupid water heater! What _good_ what that have done? And it took me so long to realize that for every time she hurt me and I thought it was your fault, you were there picking me back up. You were _always_ there, damn it! Who was there when my skin graft got infected in that shitty hospital? Or when they told us we couldn’t afford any physical therapy and that I would need help doing basic shit? Who did all that stuff and helped me with _everything_? It wasn’t Mrs. Weaver! I may not be able to remember anything about that day, but it’s not like no one ever filled me in. Lonnie told me that Mrs. Weaver just stood there so _you_ had to do everything!”

Adora’s mouth dropped open, and she wanted to speak, but Catra wasn’t done.

“If you had testified against Mrs. Weaver, that bitch probably would’ve just smothered me in my sleep. Or we would have been separated just like we were! But it doesn’t matter, cause she’s rotting in jail _anyway!_ So who gives a fuck how it happened? Because I can’t anymore!”

In the wake of her yelling, her revelation, they just stood there. Catra’s hands were balled up and she was panting, but her expression melted into something soft, like a burden had been lifted from her shoulder. Adora tried to think of something to say, but they were just more apologies and excuses, and Catra had just made it pretty clear they wouldn’t change the what-ifs and the what-could-have-beens. All they really had was right now. Maybe all of it happened so that would be standing here, facing each other. There was nothing Adora could say that Catra wanted to here, so she didn’t talk. She just threw herself at Catra and took her in arms. Catra’s own arms were around her in an instant and it was like, in that moment, Adora could breathe again.

After thirteen years of holding her breath, Adora could breathe once again.

“You stupid idiot,” Catra laughed into Adora’s shoulders, “I thought we were done with you crying everytime we saw each other.”

Adora nestled her head in the crook her neck. “Whatever, you’re crying too! I thought we were done screaming at each other.”

“I bet you’re friends think I’m a fucking riot.” Catra chuckled, pulling away. Adora took her hands.

“Well, they definitely like your tattoos.” In the golden light of the street, Adora could see them again in all their glory. Might as well clear the air about what she’d done now.

Catra just scoffed, a crooked smile on her face. “You know, I did not think you had that in you. And turning up the heat? That’s fucking sinister.”

“Oh thank you,” Adora snorted before her eyes fell back to Catra’s arms. Their hands were still intertwined. “They’re really beautiful, Catra.” _You’re really beautiful._

“Eh, they’re nothing.” she shrugged.

“They’re not-” Adora tried to protest but Catra just smirked.

“I _mean,_ the ones on my ribcage are a lot more impressive.” Oh. _Oh._ Dropping Adora’s hands, Catra nails started to trail up her tank top. “Just showin you now will be a hell of a lot easier than you driving Glimmer fucking  crazy just to get my clothes off.”

Dry mouth and rapid heartbeat aside, Adora couldn’t believe what she was about to say. She reached out and stopped Catra’s hand. “Thank you, but- that’s not what I want to see.”

“What?” Catra narrowed her eyes only for understanding to hit her like a train, “Fine but you _can’t_ cry.” Adora wasn’t going to promise anything.

Catra turned around, just like she had done in the restaurant. Then, with a sigh, she stripped out of her tank top in one swift movement and held up her mass of hair with her arms. The scar was now barred for Adora to see.

This second time she had seen it, to look and study it in the soft light pouring from the nearby bakery windows. It was so different from when it first became a part of her body; gone was the red of the muscle and the charred black and dead skin, now layers of skin of pasty and dark yellow, pink and brown only broken up by the thin line of her bra, but none of it matched the soft dark skin of her back that remained unscarred. Grotesque and unnatural, since the graft had not healed properly and sentenced Catra to a series of painful infections that left her crying in Adora’s arms through long endless nights.

“Does it still hurt?” Adora whispered, reaching out to lay her fingers on her back.

“Nope.” Catra clicked her tongue. “All my nerve endings are gone, and it's not like they can replace those. I can’t feel anything.”

Adora glanced at her hand. “Anything?”

“Well I know you’re touching me, but it’s more of a sensation. Like the feeling doesn’t have definition, I dunno. And sometimes it aches, like when I have bad dreams and it rains and shit.” Catra threw a glance back at Adora, “Pretty ugly, right?”

“It’s not- it’s not ugly! Why would you say that Catra?” Adora took back her hand and Catra turned back around, throwing her tank top back on.

“I dunno, objectivity?” she shrugged, “I mean, what’s outside represents the inside.”

 _Did she - did she just call herself ugly?_ “That’s bullshit, Catra. All this represents is how- how _strong_ you are! You’re strength is so beautiful and, and you’re beautiful. You’re scar is beautiful.” In all her protesting, Adora found herself right in Catra’s face, unsure just how she had gotten there.

“There really is no one like you, Princess.” whispered Catra. Their hands brushed, a shock of electricity running up Adora’s arm. All around her was the scent of cinnamon and the color of blue and yellow. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say Catra’s gaze had fallen to her lips.

“I wish you could see what I see, Catra.” Adora whispered. Something, some unknown force, was pulling her towards Catra. And who was she to fight it?

“That’s so fucking cheesy Adora.” purred Catra, her hand resting on Adora’s cheek. Pulling her closer as Adora’s fingers curled around Catra’s own. “And so fucking you.”

There was no thinking. There was no second guessing. Adora wanted this so badly, Catra’s lips on her own, there was no denying that any more. What she wanted was right in front of her, and Adora thought that she might want her too. Adora leaned into Catra, leaned into her touch as she pulled her forward to meet her halfway and-

“Good news everyone! Entrapta has fixed the smart oven!” _Are you fucking kidding me?_

It was Sea Hawk, of all people, but that didn’t really come as a surprise. As soon as he had thrown the door oven and made his big announcement, whatever spell Catra and Adora had been under broke. They flew apart, just like earlier, and the moment was gone.

Adora sighed and ran her hand through her ponytail. This time, Catra hadn’t run to the other side of the world, rather stood in front of Adora and glanced back at her with annoyance in her eyes. Adora couldn’t help but bite back a smile. This moment was gone, but maybe, just maybe she could get them another one.

‘Oh-” Sea Hawk eyed their hidden interaction, “Was I interrupting something?”

“Do you care if you were?” asked Catra, crossing her arms.

Sea Hawk harbored an expression of guilt for a few seconds only to brush it off. “Oh Catra! I found your aux cord!” As Adora came to stand next to Catra, the wild jack of all trades slapped half of a fraying cord into her hand.

“Thanks?” her incredulous look didn’t deter him in the slightest and Adora swallowed her laughter.

He then clasped a red and black bracelet in her hands. “I also made you this bracelet. Welcome to the group, Catra!”

Catra looked at it for a few seconds, then rolled her eyes and slipped it on. What else was she going to do? Snickering, Adora followed Catra and Sea Hawk back into the bakery. It was a strange feeling, not going in alone. She was so used to having to face those she’d run out on by herself. But with Catra rolling her eyes beside her, Adora thought maybe she didn’t have to do it alone anymore.

Everyone was gathered around the table Sea Hawk and Mermista had been sitting at while Frosta was taking a ballpoint pen to Perfuma’s shoulder and drawing what looked like a very sad and dead flower on her. Bow sat with his head cocked, adding general critiques that only served to make Frosta mad. Even Entrapta sat cross legged on the table, munching on a cake pop and watching with wide eyes.

“Catra!” she shouted once they were back inside, waving around a white envelope “I have successfully fixed the oven and Glimmer paid me 200 dollars!”

“You earned it, Trapta. Buy Emily a nice cage so she’ll stop fucking jumping on me!”

“Why would I put Emily in a cage?”

Catra and Adora exchanged a look, and Catra just shrugged. Well, at least she tried.

“Adora!” Glimmer shouted, running up and enveloping her in a hug. “Are you okay, we were _so_ worried!

“Hey Glimmer, I’m okay. Oh, you’re squeezing me- ow Glimmer my ribs!” That was enough to get her best friend to let her go.

“I’m glad you’re okay. But no more touching the thermostat okay?!” she yelled, jabbing Adora in the stomach.

“Okay, okay!” she laughed, bumping her shoulder. “What are you guys doing in here?”

Glimmer gave a loose shrug. “Oh they started talking about tattoos they would get if they could and then one thing led to another, Frosta is now drawing on Perfuma.”

“Ow, ow, ow!” Perfuma seemed to whine one cue.

“There! I’m done!” announced Frosta with a flourish.

Perfuma look down at her arm and her face soured. Adora couldn’t say she saw that expression from the florist that often. “Oh, that’s a- it’s okay, I love ugly flowers too.”

“It’s not ugly!”

“Yes it is,” Catra said after taking one look at the drawing on Perfuma’s arm. She then yanked the pen from Frosta’s hand. “And I can do so much better.”

Catra hopped onto the table and crouched right by Entrapta, taking Perfuma’s arm. “This is nice of you Catra.” Perfuma looked up at her as she started sketching, holding the pen between her teeth. Adora took a deep breath and leaned back against the display case. Glimmer had _definitely_ turned the temperature back down. “Listen, I wanted to apologize for what I said earlier. It was incredibly rude of me.’

“S’fine.’ shrugged Catra.

“Woah!” Frosta leaned over Catra and her jaw fell. “Yep, that is a lot better than I can do. Will you do me next? I’m thinking a snowflake.”

Mermista scoffed. “Um what if I want to go next? I want a mermaid.”

“Well I did make Miss Catra a lovely bracelet so I think I should go next. How does a heart that says Mermisa sound?” commented Sea Hawk, stroking his mustache.

“Gross. And I called dibs first!” Frosta reminded them.

“Hey Elsa,” Catra growled behind the pen cap, “I’m not a face painter at the country fair!”

“I’ll pay you fifty bucks.”

“Done.”

Adora couldn’t help but smile at the whole thing. If she had known earlier what a disaster this night would turn out to be, she’d have locked herself in her room and not come out for a week. Yet somehow, despite all the pain and all the ugliness, every single moment of tonight had been worth it. In the best way.

“Hey.” Adora was pulled from the image in front of her when someone nudged her shoulder. She turned to see Bow.

“Hey.” she bumped his shoulder in return.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked, his eyes narrowing, “Cause it’s totally okay if you aren’t-”

“I’m fine Bow. Besides, I know that if I need someone to talk to, I have you and Glimmer.” she reassured him, a genuine smile and all.

“Oh. Oh good.” he grinned.

“You know you were right.” Adora told him in a low voice. She knew Catra wouldn’t hear her, not over the chaos of trying to decide which bidder to give a pen tattoo next, but still.

Bow’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “About what?”

Adora just looked up at Catra and he gasped.

“I _knew_ it! Team Catradora!” Bow started dancing, clapping his hands and all, but Adora silenced him with a glare, because if he kept this up, the whole _world_ was bound to know she had feelings for Catra. “You know what? You’ve had a hard night, so I’m gonna go gloat... somewhere else.” With that Bow danced his way back over to Glimmer, because who was Adora to ask that he contain himself completely. He did call it after all.

Just then, Catra looked up from her work on Perfuma and their eyes met. Split blue-golden clashing with ocean eyes. There seemed to be something her gaze, her crooked smile, that promised that this night between them was just the beginning.

Adora couldn’t wait to see where it led, where chasing Catra would take her. She knew that now.

And if her wild heartbeat and her sense of finally being whole told her anything, Adora also knew what was going on the last blank page of her notebook.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I know you're all probably sick of Adora so I'm happy to announce we are going to Catra the next chapter! We're going to get to see them work on the book together and what conversations that will bring externally and internally. It also means Scorpia will be making a long awaited return, which I'm excited for. Because after all, is it really a Catradora fic if Scorpia and Entrapta aren't talking Catra through her own feelings? (I high key love that trope, love this fandom)
> 
> Oh speaking of that! Regarding Adora's fanfic comment, that wasn't a comment about the She-Ra and Catradora's approach to fanfiction. I personally think Catra and Adora are being handled really well by a whole range of authors. However, I think we've all been in other fandoms where it's just like "wow we're really going to ignore that- ok." So it's just a funny meta thing I thought to put there. 
> 
> I am... not sure how to feel about this chapter. sigh. oh well.
> 
> Catra's right shoulder tattoo: [x](https://pin.it/eudt5jktpbqljf)
> 
>  
> 
> feel free to come yell at me [](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com) on my tumblr  
> thanks again for reading~ savannah


	9. hard to stop when the car's in drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every time Adora said something nice to her, of the heart or from her soul or whatever, every time Catra had this pointless inward battle. Pointless because she could not turn away from the light that was Adora, however blinding and however many migraines it resulted in. And so she kept coming back to a fight and feeling that was tearing her apart from the inside out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooooooooooooooooooooh my god school is killing me. chronic pain and mental illness sure are doing their fair share of being a pain in the ass tho.
> 
> thank you for all your patience in waiting for me to update. It really allows me to put everything I can into the story so it's the best possible story it can be for you guys. Thank you for all your support here and on tumblr. Your sweet, thoughtful messages keep me going and they keep the story going.
> 
> So like the bakery scene, this next little arc will be taking place over two chapters. Why you ask? Cause this one got so long and I needed to update ;)
> 
> another little warning: throughout this chapter I explore Catra's past (and sorta relationship) with Hordak (worldbuilding, in one of *my* fics? it's more likely than you think) so I just wanted to give a heads up for continuing the narrative regarding child abuse. I just really feel like it explains a lot for Catra.
> 
> this jumps ALL over the place. We start with a memory, then we go back to the night Catra went through adora's notebook. Then we fastforward to a week after the bakery. in my head in makes sense, but...

The first time Catra got behind the wheel of a car, back at 14, the brakes failed. 

That was thing about Hordak, Catra never could get a leg up on him, no matter what clever plan her wild defiance dreamed up. And yeah, stealing her psychopath of guardian’s prized Mustang at two in the morning just because she was pissed at him was not her most brilliant idea, but damn it if her classic impulsivity didn’t think so.

It had been way too easy to steal that car and she should have been able to see that. But Catra was difficult, not intelligent, hard to reign in because she used her anger and her emotions as the cheap way out instead of her head. At least according to her foster father. That bastard was incapable of feeling - unlike the moments Catra found herself combusting and yet so empty at the same time. He operated on little to no emotions period. He wanted Catra to be him, was conditioning her to be like him. And yeah, maybe if Catra was a little more pathological and a lot less borderline she’d have noticed that getting away with stealing the Mustang was a complete and total setup.

Hordak kept a collection of restored cars in an extensive garage just on the edge of his property, because when they weren’t pretending to be a poor but healthy family, Hordak was flexing on buddies and skimping out on school supplies for his very dysfunctional children. His love for those stupid cars of his stretched about as far as his subtle narcissism. Cars none of his other secondary objects- his foster children- were allowed to lay even a finger on. Hidden from authorities and daylight, he kept among others a 1963 Buick Riveria, Mazda R-X7 (Catra thought it was the _ugliest_ fucking car she’d ever seen in her life, no wonder it stayed locked away and dusting in that garage), a Ferrari F40 from 1989. Stealing any one of them would’ve cut Hordak where it hurt. But Catra, in all her fourteen year old stupidity, wanted his _favorite_ one. His absolute pride and joy- next to that brat baby of his- his 1969 Ford Mustang.

Catra  _ despised  _ that car. Actually, she hated all of them and sometimes she thought about how funny it would be if the garage were to explode one day and burn them to smoldering piles. In hindsight, Catra should’ve known her foster father was incapable of feeling love by the way he interacted with anyone who crossed his path, but she was dumb enough- and naive enough- to believe he could love her like the daughter she kept trying to be because it definitely seemed like he could feel love given the way he treated that stupid car. An inanimate object received all his time, all his affection, all his _ money _ . He refused to buy her or any of their siblings new clothing and told her to get a job while he turned around and bought that dumb bucket of bolts new leather seats. So Catra had to lie about her age to the Office Depot manager (and the sad thing is, it wasn’t even that hard because everyone in her town was a idiot) just to come home with a paycheck. Any attempt to get Hordak’s attention ended with Catra screaming her head off while Hordak hadn’t budged an  _ inch.  _ This was all part of his plan to make her better, there was always a lesson in his ways. And Catra wanted to be better and she  _ wanted  _ to be like him, for god’s sake she  _ was  _ trying, but she could never understand his “lessons.” All they ever served to do was leave her enraged. And empty. Really, really empty.

Well maybe there wasn’t a lesson in any of this, she thought as she locked herself in her room after trying and failing to start another fight. A fight that had not surprisingly backfired in her stupid face because Hordak was too focused on his actual progeny. But at least she came home with free drawing materials and Hordak got to further… whatever his plan was. It was a double win; she got to scream at that bastard and feel the only worth she ever felt in getting to take him on. But it didn’t stop the emptiness that  _ always  _ followed and it didn’t stop her from going through four ink pens in only the blink of an eye as she tore through her brand new sketchbook.

She leaned back in her bed, looking at the scraps and shreds that had become of her new sketchbook. It had been the nicest, most expensive one in the art store next to the Office Depot, and Catra had been elated to buy it. But as she glared at her own wreckage, blinking tears out of her eyes, she wondered why she’d ever thought that this dumb book would ever make her feel better. It’s not like she was Hordak and could fill that stupid, raging emptiness inside her with pointless objects. Sniffling, Catra realized something.

“Hordak probably wouldn’t like if I tore up something of his…” she muttered, chewing on a long nail. Maybe, just maybe, it was time for Catra to teach Hordak a lesson of his own, one about solely loving things that couldn't even love you.

And stealing his fucking car? Catra thought to herself as she turned the lock on the door. That was bound to get her a couple of hours of face to face interaction that would keep her going for several weeks, right up until her next “clever idea.” Or it might just get her kicked out again. Catra didn’t really care, either would do.

Catra had the lock to the garage door picked in a matter of minutes. Swiped that maniac’s keys from right under his nose. That wasn’t even the best part. The best part was that  _ he  _ had taught her those skills, made it some massive deal that Catra know how to do those things. They were just more lessons to bestow upon her, so really, this was all on him, and it served him right for giving all his focus to his bitch baby after  _ Catra  _ had done all the hard work of feeding him and changing him. Pulling the garage door open, Catra kept her movements miniscule. The slightest noise would wake that bastard up and spoil her plan. She’d never get another chance. Luckily, years of sneaking around in the shadows of Weaver’s place had taught her how to be silent and swift, not to mention how to thrive under a little pressure. In a matter of minutes, she had the key in the ignition of the Mustang, reveling in her victory.

Looking around, she couldn’t help but curse without any trace of irony. The interior of this car was nicer than their entire fucking house. Oh, so he could afford custom speakers but he couldn’t spare a five dollar bill so she could buy some actual pajamas? What a fucking cheapskate.

As the car thrummed to life, Catra took a deep breath; it wasn’t like she’d ever actually driven a car before. Tiffany, one of her older foster sisters at the last host Hordak banished her to, taught her the important things, like what the brake and accelerator did, how the clutch worked while Catra hung on her every word. In the back of her mind she knew that she listened because Tiffany had a pretty uncanny resemblance to the last blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl Catra had loved. Not that Catra would  _ ever  _ admit it. Tiffany never actually let Catra drive the car, much to her massive annoyance. Nowadays, Hordak talked about teaching her- when she had earned it.

“At this rate I’m never gonna fucking drive.” she ran hands covered in black pen ink over the steering wheel. “But today… that changes. How’s this for earning it,  _ Dad? _ ” she spit the last word before settling in the seat, calm sense of confidence washing out her unstable impulsivity. How hard could it really be? Underneath her feet she tested the accelerator and the engine roared, shaking her to her core and burying her under a wave of excitement. Suddenly she wasn’t feeling quite so empty any more.

Catra clicked the remote that opened the garage door, the one hid right under the stereo and put the car in gear. Putting a little pressure on the gas, the car jerked forward only for Catra to slam on the brake. The excitement that had hit before hit her again like electric shock. “Oh fuck yes!” But for her ballsy display of confidence, she could only drive the freaking car out the garage at a pathetic 10 miles an hour.

It was a total disaster at first. The kind of disaster where Catra didn’t feel any remorse that she hit their mailbox experimenting with the clutch, or missed a few stop signs once she found the bravery to go over 30 miles an hour. No one actually cared. Everyone in that gross town was asleep and if they were awake, she doubted anyone of them gave enough of a shit to challenge one of Hordak’s own.

“Okay, Hordak,” Catra caught a reflection of her own smug face in his rearview mirror, “I see why you like the car so freaking much.”

By the time Catra reached open road in their hick town, the car was obeying her every move. Of course it wasn’t eloquent, but at least the car stopped jerking when she changed gears. With the windows open, the smell of dust and the air of the night filled her lungs. “Look Hordak! No hands!” she practically cackled, loosening her grip and throwing her hands off the wheel. The car swerved with a jerk and she shouted with glee. Fucking glee? When was the last time she could say that without any sense of irony?

No more feeling so fucking empty. No more feeling so unworthy. Not right now.

The car purred as Catra swung the wheel and found herself in front of a mass expanse of highway that didn’t stop for miles and miles. There was no one and nothing around for a seemingly infinite space. Catra breathed in and out, trying to chase dumb temptation out of her mind. Just because the road looked like freedom, looked like an escape, didn’t make it one. This was not a chance to make a break for it. He may not have loved her, but Catra was too valuable to Hordak. And with this car practically doubling the bounty on her, there wasn’t anywhere in the world he couldn’t find her.

But that didn’t mean Catra couldn’t make the most out of the open road in front of her. Besides, she'd get out of this god awful town at  _ some _ point. Hopefully before she died of fucking boredom. Maybe she couldn’t have her freedom, but she could steal a taste of it. Right here, right now. So, putting the car in gear and yelling, “Fuck it!” Catra threw her bare foot down on the accelerator.

45 miles per hour. The purple and orange dawn of the horizon began to blur in her periphery.

50 miles per hour. Catra shouted, throwing her hands up again, joy flooding through her veins for the first time since- actually she couldn’t remember. But who even gave a fuck? She, sure as hell, didn’t. All she wanted was to go faster, further,  _ away- _ and the Mustang obeyed. Her clawed fingernails dug into the stick as Catra changed gears, listening to the will of the car. So besides the leather interior, the sick speakers, and the horses under the hood,  _ this _ is why that son of a bitch loved this car. The  _ power _ that it held, the power that it gave Catra in this moment as she pushed her foot further down. The power she'd been denied her whole life.

60 miles per hour. Holy fuck. The county line disappeared in her rearview. Why had no one ever told her freedom felt so much like acceleration? That the sunrise burning her eyes could be so fucking beautiful as she sped into it at 70 miles per hour with no intention of ever slowing down. Goodbye to the voices in her head that told her she was nothing. The aggravating whispers that sounded like Weaver telling her she was just as worthless as her dead whore of a mother. Hordak’s demands that she think and not feel. But God, why the hell should she listen to him if feeling something, if this- the rolling red mountains blurring together in this wasteland, the fading stars in the sky, and the power this machine brought her- was what feeling was. Fuck Hordak and his backwards logic. And fuck anyone else who tried to tell her what her limits were.

Right now, she didn’t have any limits.

Catra would remember that feeling forever. In a sense, she’d been chasing it ever since. There never had been anything that came close to that inkling of happiness she had pumping through her veins that morning where the only sound was the roar of that engine. But there was another feeling Catra couldn’t forget, and it lived inside her, rotting and festering, to keep the other feeling in check, just like Hordak wanted it to.

Just like he planned.

At some point, Catra tore her eyes away from the windshield and glanced down at her dashboard when she realized she hadn’t exactly been smart with her gas. She’d lost track of time. “Damn it!” she yelled, punching the steering wheel and taking her foot of the accelerator. The Mustang moaned in protest as the speedometer fell back to 60 miles. “I got you, girl,” whispered Catra as she changed gears. “Guess we’re gonna have to turn around, aren’t we?”

But the Mustang had other plans. When Catra tried to swing the car around in a sloppy attempt at a U-turn, her foot on the brake, the car didn’t slow down. It didn't respond to her at all.

“Oh shit!”

Panic, pure paralyzing panic, replaced her excitement in the blink of an eye because she was throwing her foot down on the brake, over and over and over, but the car didn't stop. It wouldn’t stop. The Mustang had completely betrayed her, and now she was spinning out of control, the tires skidding off the road and onto desert ground.

_ Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!  _ God dammit why didn’t she ever  _ think?  _ Why was it so hard for her to just think something through for once? Hordak was right about her. She was a fucking timebomb and guess what, her time was up! Catra clutched the steering wheel and gave up her useless attempts to try and turn the damn thing. Like it was listening to her anyway. She shut her eyes and slammed the brake again, this time keeping her foot there.  _ Oh God, oh God, oh God- _

_ BANG! _

“Mother fuck-” Everything was so horrifically instantaneous, happening too fast for Catra to process. She was hit with a force that flung her whole body forward, as the hood of the car crinkled with a sickening sound. Her vision went black-  _ oh God it's happening again- _ as her face collided with an unforgiving airbag in the quickest second in the world. The seatbelt caught her body, probably saving her from flying through windshield and impaling her skull with the pole; Catra could feel the fabric choking her throat and cutting deep in her skin. Pain exploded in her head, all through her body as her bones fell back into their correct places, but not without a nauseating crack in her chest.

Catra tried to breathe but a jolt of pains from her ribcage stopped her plans. Her shaking hands reached for her seat belt, the scent of smoke and the demanding presence of pain clouding her brain. “Oh God,” she whimpered. She could taste blood. Where it was coming from- her nose, her tongue, God  _ fucking _ damn it- Catra couldn't tell. How could she be numb, yet every limb screamed at her in protest. It was the second longest eternity of her life before she forced her eyes open to see they damage she'd caused.

The smoke- and shit was that a fire- and stupid airbag that wouldn't go away blurred the scene, but Catra got a good enough view to see what she had done.  The front of the car was totalled. She’d hit a streetlight going 60 plus miles an hour and it had killed the Mustang. Deformed the hood beyond recognition.  _ Well, I guess we have that in common. _

Catra didn’t even have time to appreciate she was not a corpse sandwiched between metal and leather, that despite throbbing in her torso and bloody nose, she was alive.

Hordak was going to find her, so she wouldn’t be for long.

“He did this.” Catra’s voice was barely a whisper as she pushed open the door with shaking arms, and she fell out of the car coughing. When she pulled herself up, she was met with the disgusting sight of the Mustang wrecked, smoking, broken. The Mustang was his, but in a way, Catra had fallen in love with her only to fuck it completely up. Because she was only capable of destruction and she destroyed everything she touched.

_ No _ . Tears pricked her eyes. This wasn’t her fault. “He did this! He fucking did this!” her screams echoed through the fading smoke and desert, as she tore at her hair and kicked the car. “Fuck!”

Hordak messed with the brakes. She didn’t know how, but she was  _ sure _ of it. That was the only way, she decided as she fell to the dirt floor, her stupid bare feet aching. This was  _ so  _ like her foster father. And if this was just another one of his goddamn lessons- and she’d bet her next paycheck it was- she was going to lose her everloving shit.  

There was no sound in the surrounding desert for longest time but her miserable sobbing as the sun rose. Then the cops found her, swarming her in a half circle, their lights and sirens taking up too much space and sound. Turns out Catra could drive out of the county, but the pigs in Hordak’s pockets still had jurisdiction wherever  _ she  _ went. Or Hordak’s property. So both the car and Catra. After they dragged her to the ambulance and paramedics, several of them took turns with condescending lectures that Catra didn’t bother listening to. Yes, she knew she was fourteen, officer. Yes, she understood that she snuck out and broke curfew. Yes, she realized she destroyed a car worth more money than she’d ever see in her life. And yes, she saw that she was barefoot.

"Oh, Mr. Hordak, sir- we have your foster daughter, sir.” The main douchebag in charge of the rest stopped short when Hordak appeared behind him. Catra’s whole body froze. A state she hated with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t ever seem to control the fear that paralyzed her to the core. Catra wasn’t brave- or maybe stupid- enough to scream at him right then and there, so she settled for cowardly glaring.

“Thank you, Officer. That’ll be all.” Hordak didn’t break eye contact with her as he spoke to the pig. “Take your men, go home.”

“Oh um,” the cop swallowed, visibly cowering, Catra almost laughed. Here was a grown man, with all the power in the world to abuse it as he saw fit, shaking in his boots. “She uh- she’s got some broken ribs and uh- whiplash. Don’t you think she should see a doctor? At maybe- um, a hospital, sir?”

Hordak’s nostrils flared. “No. She’ll be coming home with me.”

_ What?  _ Catra wanted to scream. He wasn’t going to take her to the freaking hospital because he was what- mad that she made it out  _ alive?  _ Tearing her gaze away from her foster father, she looked to her bare feet hanging off the edge of the ambulance. Hordak probably wanted her dead. God, why had she  _ ever _ idolized him?  _ Don’t cry!  _ she screamed at herself, swallowing the irritating lump in her throat.  _ Don’t give him the fucking satisfaction of seeing you so weak. _

“Oh. Um-” the cop coughed.

“Take your men home,” Hordak repeated, enunciating every word so that it cut like a knife.

Catra dared a glance up to see the pig  _ saluting  _ Hordak. What the  _ hell? _ “Of- of course!” Catra glowered, but he still scurried away like the spineless backstabbing rat he was. The whole goddamn system was against her! Hordak’s iron grip on this pathetic town was going to be the death of her; even if that dumb cop had taken her to the hospital, they wouldn’t have treated Catra until they had Hordak’s permission in writing. They wouldn’t have been glad to see her back anyway, those heartless assholes.

The lights and sirens faded as tires sped away from dirt to asphalt. Great. Now she was left for Hordak to strangle her and there wouldn’t be a single witness or anyone to find her lifeless body.

Just like he wanted.

“You tampered with the brakes.” that voice inside her that just didn’t know when to shut up had taken the wheel. Maybe it’s because his back was turned, maybe it was because Catra was so angry her entire body was shaking. And now she was going to explode. “You knew-”

“I  _ knew-”  _ Hordak’s sharp words cut her off like a knife in her back, “-that you had a special place of hatred in your heart for my Mustang. I knew you would give into such weakness, like you always do.”

A sob escaped her trembling lips. It was one thing to believe he had set out to see her harmed, it was another to hear him it admit with prideful confidence. He was never going to love her. Catra could see that in his eyes as he looked at her.

Catra didn’t know real love, actual love- but this, this wasn’t it. As she dragged her aching body behind, and listened to his cold restraint, she knew he never would and there was nothing she could do, no one she could ever become would change that. “I hope this is a lesson for you, Catra. You are  _ not  _ to cross me again. Do not get in the way of my operation, is this understood?”

It used to be “Do not get in the way of my operation, and one day it could be yours.” Guess not anymore. As they walked past the corpse of the Mustang, Catra moved to wipe the snot from her nose, but all she came back with was her own dried blood. So that’s what had been bleeding.

“Remember Catra,” Hordak’s filled her ears as she stared at the flakes of red on her fingertips, “curiosity killed the cat.”

When it came to her, that was his favorite phrase. To this day, Catra never knew if Hordak was joking, a psychopathic attempt at humoring her, or if it was meant to be a threat.

But it worked, hadn't it? Catra may have run across the country to escape that bastard wannabe warlord, yet he stayed in the back of her mind, his words holding her back by the collar lest she escape the fear he trapped her in. The larger victory was his, like it always was.

Of all the dumb and impulsive stunts Catra had pulled off when she was with Hordak, crashing his Mustang and almost killing herself in the process was not the one she expected to have on repeat in her mind ever since finding and opening Adora’s dumb notebook in her car. Memories of that bitch Weaver stealing her childhood was the alley she thought her triggers were going to take her that night. Of course Adora getting completely shit-faced had to have consequences for both of them. Consequences like Catra staying up all night long (while her roomate played the song  _ All Night Long  _ on repeat until Catra started throwing pencils at her) just to flex on a hot girl for getting drunk by drawing her equally hot goddess persona. (“Of  _ fucking  _ course She-Ra’s gorgeous!” “Isn’t that  _ your  _ depiction of her? That’s just your interpretation of her writing-” “Shut UP, Trapta and go back to Lionel Richie!”) and then passing out for six hours out of emotional exhaustion alone.

Catra was always forced to endure gorish and repetitive nightmares that never failed to make her wish she was dead, graphic depictions of things Weaver did and didn’t do, her traumatized brain trying to figure out what went wrong that day in the basement, Hordak and his dumb crime empire, but that night- or morning but she didn't really give a shit about accuracy- her dream wasn’t a nightmare. It was a memory. A fucking amazing one at that, too. Fourteen years old again, reckless, and barefoot, and having the time of her freaking life in that beautiful car. Just her and that addictive feeling of joy, happiness... freedom, and no fear that her safety nets would fail her.

But brakes flake out, and dreams end because dumb blonde idiots had hangover guilt. Catra wasn’t even aware Adora was calling her- because why would anyone  _ call  _ her? what was this, 2005?- just lingering in that hyper realistic state of awake yet dreaming, when a little plop of purple hair popped up by her pillow and whispered in her ear, “Your phone is ringing.”

“-the  _ fuck?”  _ Catra gasped, drool flying out of her mouth as she bolted up and swiped at whatever ungodly creature dared to wake her up when Entrapta let out a high pitched yelp. “Damn it Entrapta! I  _ told  _ you not to wake me up and- and why- why are you still here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Oh right…” Entrapta waved a finger in realization. Catra could still hear  _ Hello  _ blasting from the kitchen and she smacked her forehead. Whatever experiment she’d been conducting all night long- Catra hated herself for stumbling upon that dumb pun- had taken up her whole morning apparently. Entrapta made a popping noise with her mouth and that’s when Catra realized her phone was buzzing.

“Who the fuck is calling me?” asked Catra, dragging her stiletto nails down her face.

“Oh that’s unknown, but they’ve called you three times-”

“Entrapta, go to work!” When Entrapta, her head tilted with  _ that  _ look on her face, stayed staring at her vibrating cell phone, Catra added, “ _ Now,  _ or I’m telling Scorpia!”

The mention of disappointing their shared roommate snapped Entrapta out of her trance and she stood up, all pouty and despondent and Catra’s traitorous brain betrayed by thinking  _ don’t you pull an Adora on me _ because why in the hell would her mind go straight to Adora? What did that blonde idiot have to do with a cute person pouting at her? “Okay, I’ll go. Are you gonna answer it-”

“GO!”

The minute Entrapta turned around, and not a second before, Catra picked up her cellphone. 3 missed calls from the same number? Who were they, the bank? “Who are you? Why are you calling me? How’d you get this number?” She bit her canines into her lip, hoping her anger would transfer over on other end and this idiot would just hang up.

“Catra! Catra!”  _ Uggghhhhhhh.  _ It was Adora and her stupid, beautiful, aggravating, enchanting voice. “It’s me Adora! Calm down- ”

And then realization and panic hit Catra like that time Entrapta threw a frying pan at her at MegaMart. How the  _ hell  _ had Adora gotten her fucking phone number? And why was Catra kind of turned on and a little impressed at all the sneaking around Adora had done to get it?

The conversation that followed invoked a weird feeling in Catra. She couldn’t put her finger on what the uncomfortable sensation was, but she did  _ not _ like it. She did not like the way Adora’s voice made her heart feel lighter. She did not like the way she couldn’t ignore anything Adora said no matter how hard she tried (which was not actually very hard because Adora was being really cute-  _ who _ was she?!). And she did not like that Adora made her  _ laugh _ , or that she had cared enough to call and apologize- a real apology not the dumb crap her exes would pull- and that she wanted make things right. But her least favorite thing had to be the way she felt actual, genuine sympathy for her, second only to the way she just could not resist teasing her.

_ Curiosity killed the cat,  _ the S.O.B's words chose that moment to haunt her.

So if she hated the way Adora made her feel, then why had she told Adora about the notebook? Her dumb impulsivity Hordak failed to condition out her, that's what. Why did her whole body weigh of guilt for reading the dumb thing?

Because something about Adora's presence made her realize that she was an actual fucking human being and she was just as accountable for her actions as everyone else.

“I… liked it.” Catra had said when Adora demanded to know what she’d thought of the idea. Honestly, what kind of question was that? Of course she had liked it. Why would Catra use good sleeping hours to go through someone’s personal diary full of flowery teenage lesbian fantasies if Adora wasn’t a good writer? Adora was good at  _ everything,  _ she always had been; even if she was tripping over her dumb heels she had the cutest ass so everything worked out in her favor (surprise, surprise).  _ Does she seriously not believe she’s a good writer? Or this just some… weird mind game?  _  “You’re a pretty good writer.”

Good enough to inspire Catra to dig out her sketchbook and spend a couple of dedicated hours with a pencil, so her mumbled words only amounted to an understatement.

Something was… happening to her. In an emotional gamble, Catra had told Adora to do whatever the hell she wanted in her story. Maybe because Catra wanted to be in the story just to prove to herself that what they had when they were kids meant  _ something  _ to the other girl, but in the moment she just shrugged it off as a dumb, emotional notion. Then, when Adora asked for the notebook back, that voice inside her that never knew when to shut up took the wheel and then hung up the freaking phone. Now she was supposed to  _ go  _ to Adora’s apartment.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Catra asked an empty room. Usually a car ride with Adora meant taking a few days off of whatever this was so she could stew in her confusion- which was practically suffocating her right now- and now she was seeing her again less than twelve hours later. There had to be  _ some  _ reason. Maybe she was just horny. In the past, that was more often than not the reason she let girls throw up on her.  _ Well duh,  _ she sighed and threw her head back, her nails digging into her mattress,  _ but for some reason rawing the person I’ve despised for the last thirteen years just because she’s hot and mouthy now seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Wonder why. _

Taking a deep breath, she caught a whiff of an all too familiar rancid smell. For fuck’s sake, it was coming from her. “Ugh, I smell like vomit.”  _ Thanks Adora. _

Even though she had  _ just  _ told Adora thirty minutes or she was keeping the notebook for good, Catra took her sweet time stripping as she walked to the shower. Good. Let Adora wait. She grumbled at the thought of her pretty voice making stubborn complaints about Catra being late, leaning on the shower tile and surrendering to the smoldering hot water. It wasn’t smart to operate when her mind was preoccupied by Adora-  _ Adora, Adora, Adora- _ but Catra found herself thinking about ocean blue eyes and goddesses in tiaras.

“God the tiara thing is so stupid.” Catra chuckled. “Kinda cute, but still pretty fucking stupid.”

The longer she stood in the shower giving into dissociation, the longer she thought about Adora’s book. The premise was- for lack of a better word- interesting. And yeah, that was a pretty judgemental take coming from somebody who’d torn through the entire thing and drank in every cursive word. She’d assailed her eyes at the constant sight of of sparkly gel pens (who writes in every shade of dollar store pink and blue?) just to know what Adora had planned next. Catra preferred late night television and highly flammable car chases so this whole aesthetic remained new territory for her.

A wave of jealousy hit Catra and bathed her like the steamed that surrounded her, her thoughts betraying her admiration. Adora didn’t even take most of the hits, Catra was pretty sure to this day that she hadn’t taken any, and here she was, about to write a New York Times Best Seller and retain a cathartic experience. Beaten, bruised,  _ burned,  _ and left like the last pathetic puppy in the cardboard box, Catra should get to be the one catharting all over the place and using her trauma to milk a fucking cash cow.

_ “You know, Adora doesn’t have a monopoly on meaningful creations,”  _ Catra could practically hear Scorpia’s hit or miss wisdom bouncing around in her head, “ _ You could make something amazing too! I know you could! Oh hey, did I use the word monopoly right? I know, kind of a gamble…”  _ At which point Entrapta would chime in to validate her  _ and  _ Catra with some random statistic and it would all become one big fluffy love hug circle right before Catra could hiss  _ “for the last goddamn time- personal space!” _

It had been nice to draw again and not really give a fuck about what was going on in her surroundings. Even with Entrapta playing Seal songs overtop Lionel Richie; Catra couldn’t care because she was lost in the best possible way. In the movements of her pencil, the charcoal smudging on the coarse paper, She Ra’s glass jaw line she kinda wish would cut her, her hand cramping from lost practice but Catra’s inability to stop. As she raked her fingers through her hair, her MegaMart brand coconut scented conditioner- a big improvement over Adora’s marinated vomit- she could say that she did feel slightly less... feral. Slightly.

And Adora  _ did _ go through shit- even if Catra didn’t want to admit it. Catra didn’t have a monopoly on their shared trauma. Obviously Weaver had made enough of a hellish impression on her golden girl to get a spot in She Ra. So much for enjoying being the favorite. So much for adoption fixing everything. Adora had scribbled something along the lines of  _ “Shadow Weaver and Mara- history???  _ about a third of the way through her bullet list of ‘worldbuilding ideas’ and later Catra skimmed over a sticky note that said “ _ Mara and Weaver history- see binder #4”  _ (“Oh there are  _ binders _ , Adora? How deep does this shit go?”). What the hell could that have possibly pointed to? Then there were the pages on Hordak.

“Ugh.” Catra groaned as she rinsed her hair, not too ecstatic to be thinking about her bastard foster father sober. “Why is fucking Hordak even in  _ Adora’s  _ stupid novel?” It’s not like they ever met. Or maybe they did, Catra had no freaking clue. He never mentioned her. He barely mentioned Weaver after her trial. Just another compromised piece in the game, successfully disposed of.

Catra had only escaped a similar fate by the skin of her teeth. She adapted, she got smarter in the nick of time, bolder, and played by the rules of his game until she saw her chance and took it. Said goodbye to his dusty kingdom and flipped the whole town off.  _ Catra  _ did that, Catra made herself,  _ not _ Hordak or his abusive regimes. But  _ noooo,  _ Hordak got to be in Adora’s book and be the big bad guy, the grand metaphor of imperialism, capitalism, and all the other horrors of patriarchal terrorism, dumb Lonnie and Rogelio and even dumber Kyle at his beck and call. Catra, Adora’s shadow that was better at following her than her  _ actual  _ shadow… where was she?

“I should write a novel where I punch the shit out of you Adora for making me think about Hordak and Shadow Weaver-  _ ugh,  _ fuck! I just called her by her lame She-Ra name!” She should probably get this all off her chest now. If she did actually fuck things up with Adora- and chances were she was going to anyway because she was... well, her- by screaming or kicking or punching her, Scorpia would be disappointed beyond reconciliation. Catra could hear it now: “ _ Catra! That is  _ not  _ how we make friends!”  _ “I guess that would make  _ me  _ the bad guy, heh.”

_ Oh.  _ Catra turned off the water.  _ Maybe I should- no! It’s her stupid story, she can do what she wants. _

Drying herself and biting her tongue, she pushed the thought away but it wouldn’t die. Entrapta would say that she should form a hypothesis regarding the question and test it, then thoroughly analyze her results. Scorpia would say just ask.

Should she? Ask, that is, “Adora, will you please put me in your book because you hurt my feelings leaving me out.” God that was  _ so  _ stupid. The whole  _ idea  _ was stupid, and just the crime of wonder was enough invitation for him.  _ “Curiosity killed the cat.” _

_ Get! Out! Of! My Head! _

Adora had done this. How  _ dare  _ she even mention him and bring him back into Catra’s space, back into her life? That  _ had  _ to explain that weird dream, right? She gets to relive one of her happiest defining moments only to wake up and realize Hordak had ruined her whole fucking life, and Adora had helped him do that.

_ Dude, she was only twelve.  _ This time, it was her own voice who smacked some reason into her. “Guess she didn’t know who she was leaving me with, huh?” Catra asked her own reflection as she threw her sopping curls into a “pineapple.” According to Adora, if it had been up to her, Mara would have taken both of them. And Catra wanted to believe that because she wanted to believe Adora. For whatever stupid reason her subconscious was keeping from her.

Throwing on some new clothes ( _ I think these are clean?),  _ Catra stumbled trying to put on a pair of jeans and tripped with a loud “Shit- fuck!” before collapsing onto her bed, a painful bend in her spine. The telltale crinkle of paper had her cursing even louder. She had fallen directly onto one of her drawings from the night prior, one of a robot Adora spent three full pages describing in detail that still never fell on repetitive (God, she was  _ good-  _ Catra didn’t even know there were that many words for the color green and she was failed artist). It wasn’t Catra’s favorite by a hot fucking mile. The full body portrait of She Ra and the sword probably took home the gold in her opinion, and weren’t bad considering Catra hadn’t held a pencil to paper in forever. Catra stood up straight, angling her neck and took a long look at the scattering of paper before her. The confusion- that god damn confusion- took this cue to settle back in, crawling up her spine and settling in her stomach.

“How fucking funny would it be to give these to her? Like, that would definitely get in her dumb big head.” she snickered to herself, running her thumb over her black nails, all in a laughable attempt to kick this feeling out of her and out the door. Replace it with something familiar like spite.

_ I thought you were done being angry at Adora?  _ Scorpia’s imaginary voice came back to her. Catra had kept her mouth shut around Scorpia about this whole Adora thing; her justifications for doing so landed somewhere in between a need to figure this fucking thing out for herself and “No way in hell am I going to clue Scorpia in just in case, she might think Adora is some potential  _ girlfriend.” _

“I never said I was done being mean! And- and Adora deserves it!” Catra yelled back. Great, now Adora had her talking to herself.

Yeah, Adora was holding a gun to her freaking head and demanding she voice her own thoughts. “God damnit!” See, this was the problem! Everything was  _ someone  _ else’s fault. Scorpia, Entrapta, Mrs. Weaver. Adora. Passing the blame came as easy to Catra as passing the salt at a dinner table (not that she’d ever been in a place that had real dinner tables and fancy ass things like salt- but metaphors were as fucking hard as self actualization was turning out to be). But awareness was not a cure,  _ apparently,  _ because she kept doing it! She tried to smuggle in liquor last night despite her very loving and caring roommate’s insistence that was technically contraband just because  _ Adora  _ gave her a grade A migraine.

_ I did… throw it away.  _ Catra remembered, holding her collection of drawings in her hands, tracing the faint slate lines of She Ra’s sword on the paper. Okay, that was progress, right? Instead of getting straight smashed, Catra tossed the tequila away and spent hours indulging a hobby Scorpia begged her to put more of her limited energy into, because…  _ because I wanted to be better. _

“Because I wanted to be better.” Her words were a quiet manifesto. A goddamn proclamation. All her life she was chasing after “better” but it was never right. It was never real. It was be better so Weaver won’t beat the shit out of you. Be better so Hordak will give you a fucking break. Not be better to take care of her roommates and let go of the past before it put her six feet under.

Ha. Like she could afford a funeral.

Catra was done being angry, even if she was at a complete fucking loss for how to operate now. She was done living only to spite some imaginary caricature, when the real person was actually sweet and kind, someone who saw Catra beyond her jagged edges because she remembered the person who had existed before. The real person was smart and funny and a damn good creator, and Catra had taken advantage of all she was by sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

_ Curiosity killed the cat.  _ “Yes!” the rage, back in her pounding heart, in Catra’s voice echoed throughout the apartment and came back to her empty. “I know!”

Catra didn’t want to admit it, but she knew how to fix this. Strip herself of her pride and just lay it all on the table for Adora to see, because she’d forced Adora’s hand and made her do the same. She threw open the stupid notebook of hers (had it always kinda smelled faintly of vanilla or was Catra really losing it this time?) and with shaking hands, slipped her favorite She Ra drawings between the pages.

“There,” she said, throwing on her jacket and grabbing her keys, “how’s that for a peace offering?” How’s that for being better?

It didn’t come as a surprise that Catra stewed about Hordak the whole drive to Adora’s, and she wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than daydreaming like a dizzy teenager in love about the pretty girl at the other end of the road. Retroactive fury was better than curiosity. He’d argue that neither were of value, but what did that fuck face know, other than how to make sure his mistress’ husbands ended up in a shipping crate headed for Paraguay.

Cautiously neurotic, Catra tested the brake every other minute, always expecting the car to deny the friction and fail to slow down. So what if it never did, but that didn’t mean she was breathing easy. Far fucking from it, actually.

And there on her steps, Adora was waiting for her, tired eyes trained on her phone, with her dirty blonde hair falling messy on her shoulders. Catra swallowed, her foot over the brake. She looked like something out of some modern fairy tale. ( _ Wow,  _ she sounded like an old white lady.) A breathtaking, hungover out of her damn mind, princess. Her foot collided with the brakes and Catra scoffed, the car jerking back into reality. Just because Adora looked liked a princess didn’t make this some romantic fairy tale; that option went out the door the second Adora put Hordak’s voice back in Catra’s head.

The car stopped, still under her control, and Adora got in. Guess this was a fucking routine now. Her head turned, her gaze anywhere but Adora all fluffy and dazed in her pajamas (looks like Bow was successful after all) as she lifted herself in the front seat, fighting the urge to take her foot off the brake and just stare at her. Like she wanted to. _What the fuck is wrong with you? Just because she’s out of it does not mean she’s not going to notice you drooling?_ Adora seemed superficial and oblivious on the surface, but Catra wasn’t about to risk anything because her notebook proved the _exact_ opposite. Catching a glimpse of her in the side mirror, Catra decided there was no way she was gonna sit here and just trust the car was not going to break down under her. No. They were going around the block.

And she let the voice that didn’t know how to shut up take it from there. “What about me?” Catra asked Adora, a crooked smile creeping on her face.

“You?” stuttered Adora, her cute nose wrinkling in confusion and her ocean eyes widening in shock. “You want to be She Ra’s enemy?”

_ If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.  _ Catra wanted to say. There was another feeling growing inside her, like a wound itching because it was healing, and it was chasing away the fear and hostility just the thought of Hordak had triggered in her. Gone was the misplaced anger she’d been suffocating in the whole way here. No, Catra wanted to challenge Adora. She wanted to give the rising star writer a reason to keep someone like her around. She wanted to be  _ something _ to Adora. Something other than an emotional wound to bandage and call it a day. “Yeah, why not? You have my permission, Princess. Make  _ me  _ the bad guy.”

The look on Adora’s face? Fucking priceless- and it wasn’t just the shock that brought a cocky smile to Catra’s face. It was that Adora so clearly wanted to be challenged just as much as Catra wanted to challenge her. Same old Adora. The wheels were turning in that pretty little head of hers, Catra could see it written on her face that Adora had the beginnings of a plan.  _ Hmm, what else am I here for?  _ Elation was quickly replacing the tired and failing building blocks of hate and aggression. Her heart beat too fucking fast, clawed nails digging into her leather gloves. Why did this feel so god damn familiar? Like this- or something- was going way too fast and dragging her with it. Staring at Adora, Catra thought she was hallucinating (God, did Entrapta slip her something again?) or experiencing mega deja vu. Something about this was familiar, but not enough to be within her reach.

Out of the corner of her eye, Catra caught Adora glancing down at her notebook, and panic seized her like a fucking omen.  _ Nope- can’t watch her look at the drawings- nope, fucking nope! _ At this point, she’d rather Adora see her completely naked- monstrous scar and all- than have her drawings critiqued.  _ It’s not like she watched me read the damn notebook! Or said anything directly to her face! Okay but how would Adora react if I got naked- sHUT THE FUCK UP, CATRA!  _ Getting naked would stay plan B. ( _ for now- SERIOUSLY?) _ Plan A: kick her out before she could open the freaking thing and then Catra really would wish the brakes would fail.

“Uh, will I see you later?” Adora asked, tucking a stray piece of golden hair behind her ear. Catra bit her tongue, the sole of her boot digging into the pedal below her even more, because was Adora  _ trying  _ to be sexy? And since when did such a cliche gesture make Catra want to implode? This was just Adora being cruel because she could be.

_ Just keep your foot on the brake.  _ The car was in park.

“Maybe if you promise not to stalk me.” Catra winked, holding back a smile when Adora’s cheeks turned a bright shade of red.  _ Subtle, Adora…  _ Yeah, that was a thing. If this was a game to Adora, then Catra could turn it on too. And with the way Adora practically begged to sleep with her after getting hammered, Catra didn’t think it was so off to believe that a little flirting would do just enough damage.  _ Since you want in my head so badly… then at least I’m in yours.  _ Foot on the brake.

Besides that, Catra was for real paranoid Adora was going to abuse her phone number. She had gone to odd lengths to get it, and it was both moving and creepy. At least her motivations were understandable.  _ But I’m not ready… for whatever that would be. _

They said their goodbyes, and Catra didn’t miss the disappointed glint in Adora’s eyes. A pang in her stomach, ‘cause she almost wished she could draw this out too. But right now she felt like a bomb about to fucking explode, of some emotion that wasn’t anger this time, so Catra took her foot off the brake and Adora closed the door.

_ Oh, she can turn on the kicked puppy look sober too. I’m completely fucked. _

As Catra drove away, she lost the fight in her head and looked at the rearview mirror. Adora was still lingering on the steps on her apartment; she hadn’t even opened her precious notebook or caught sight of the drawings. Thank  _ God. _ Their expressions of confusion mirrored each other and Catra swallowed. Because she wasn’t just confused, she was… excited. Adora looked back again. “Dork.” Catra tried to roll her eyes; teasing Adora came a lot easier than losing herself to this weird, dopy happiness the other woman radiated. It made Catra dopy herself, so much to the point where she was really going to explode and get something like happy hippie rainbows all over the interior of Marshmallow’s car.

The irony wasn’t lost on Catra that one of She Ra’s godly abilities was freaking healing things. Fuck, that was just in  _ Adora.  _ She didn’t need some sword or shield and she definitely didn’t need a tiara. (Nevermind it was hot as hell on her-yeah, yeah that was  _ Catra’s  _ interpretation and whatever). Each one of their conversations unlocked something in Catra. Having everything out in the open, having Adora to talk to, it made her, not to be overly sappy or anything, freer. Like she was breaking off her chains one by one, but it didn’t hurt, not with Adora there to serve as annoying distraction. Like she wasn’t so fucking empty, not with Adora making her feel this way.

Oh.  _ Oh.  _ “Fuck!” Catra slammed down on the brakes, the sickening motion of her body falling into the seatbelt throwing her back into her memories violently. Adora- Hordak- that weird dream- the car crash- curiosity killed the cat...

Seeing Hordak’s name written over and over and over in green glitter gel pen hadn’t triggered Catra’s strange reverie. It was  _ Adora. _

“This can’t be happening,” she muttered into her hands that were clawing into her eyebrows. There was  _ no  _ freaking way that that amazing moment in Hordak’s Mustang, that moment of finally being whole and tasting freedom, happiness… a real, actual desire to continue and not something that existed at the bottom of a bottle… there was no way that was in Adora. No.  _ No. _ Adora was pompous and privileged, a pouty child with bad taste in friends and an even shittier taste in clothes. Two seconds out of Weaver’s orphanage, Adora hadn’t bothered with a second glance and gave up fighting for her. Then she had the guts to act like nothing was wrong. Like  _ she  _ never did anything wrong and never could! She had  _ no  _ respect for Catra’s boundaries, physical, mental, or emotional, and she couldn’t possibly give a shit about Catra’s time! Catra couldn’t want to be around Adora, couldn’t want  _ her _ \- for all those reasons and for everything Catra decided she’d never be-

_ BEEP!  _ Catra flew up in the air so far and so fast that her head collided with the top of the car.

“What the-” Did someone just honk at her?  _ Fucking Bright Moon! _ Catra whirled around, enough energy pent up in her arms they ached, to see some fancy ass black SUV trailing her.  _ BEEP!  _ Jesus, they did it again! “Fuck off!” Catra screamed and turned around back in her seat. This was why Bright Moon flat out sucked. If she wanted to have a mental breakdown about a pretty- pretty  _ fucking  _ annoying- girl in front of a green light, then this asshole of epic proportions could go around. There was no one else around, for God’s sake.

Adora… Adora was Bright Moon. All gold and glitter on the exterior, poisonous and violating on the inside. Already living in the literal shadow of the city, there was no way in hell Catra was going to subject herself to being Adora’s actual fucking shadow. “I’m not doing that again.” she growled, watching out of the corner of her eye as the SUV drove by at a snail’s pace just so she could get the full view of their middle finger. “God, just  _ fuck _ you.”

Catra wasn’t sure who she was talking to.

These were the people who Adora chose. People who flipped you off when the next fucking lane was completely empty. And Catra? Catra was the antithesis to this city; she was the poor uneducated worker standing between Bright Moon and its glorious manifest destiny, the daughter of a Spanish-speaking immigrant poisoning stealing their hard earned jobs and scamming food stamps, the nameless nobody that no one here in all their charity could want. That was what Adora had chosen.

How cruel did the universe have to be that the woman who drank the kool aid of the system designed to make Catra nothing be the person who made her feel  _ everything? _

_ I guess the same universe that took Adora away in the first place. And the same one that brought her back. _

“Jesus Christ.” Catra spit, wiping away her tears and easing her foot off the brake, switching it to the accelerator. Speaking of Bright Moon, Catra had a job to do. A job Adora and her little mind and emotion games weren’t going to get in the way of. “Okay, shiny city of dildos, which one of you rich assholes is going to ask me to fire your maid today?”

Every fiber of her being screamed at her to go home as she drove to the upper west side, bury herself in her bed and fish that tequila out of the trashcan. Lock herself away and never speak to Adora and her soul-sucking beautiful face ever again. Catra shook the urge away, deciding to stay on her trajectory and work until she couldn’t hear her own damn treacherous thoughts any more. Bright Moon was good at that. Being a shiny distraction. “Besides,  _ Scorpia _ might be there and will definitely have questions. ‘Oh, Wildcat? Why are you home? Look! I bought new curtains. Come on, tell me what you think, oh that glare must mean you  _ love  _ em. Or does it mean that you’re upset? Do I need to comfort you? Vigorously comfort you and be your friend in this trying time!’ Ugh!” Catra rather eat glass than speak any of this into existence. She’d rather drive this car into a wall than make this any realer than it already was.

Because that was the problem, she realized somewhere around her fourth passenger (ignoring her thoughts proved to be more difficult sober, considering they walked around banging pots and pans and screaming Adora’s name to the tune of a hit Taylor Swift song). When Catra was in that Mustang, she didn’t want to stop the car because in that moment, it was everything, every feeling she’d ever been chasing _.  _ And then when she needed the car to stop, it spiraled into a pole, because Catra was doomed never to be in control. No, Catra had been lucky to walk away alive, lucky that it wasn’t the most traumatizing moment of her childhood (which said a lot). If she chased this feeling, that everything, with Adora, who’s to say it wouldn’t incapacitate her completely? Screw impulsive, this was the equivalent of diving into shallow water and drowning in her watery blood. This was the equivalent of cutting her own fucking brakes and letting the car drive her to her fiery death.

The Mustang had betrayed her even after of Catra’s hatred melted into loved for her and Adora? Adora had already left once. There was no proof she wouldn’t do it again, wouldn’t make a break for the door once she had everything she wanted from Catra. The second she got it in her pretty little head that she was off the hook for Catra’s terrible and traumatizing childhood, this little game of theirs would end, and Adora would emerge the victor.

_ This here? This is why you’ve never had a steady girlfriend.  _ Catra bit down on her lip, cursing herself for allowing Scorpia to give her any advice ever. Now Advice Scorpia was a staple in her brain and was slowly becoming her entire consciousness. “Shut the fuck up,” Catra hissed under her breath. “And just enjoy your stupid metaphorical curtains.”

“Huh? Did you say something?” her passenger inserted themselves into her space, taking a large slurp of their Smoothie-Jamba-King-Juice.  _ This does not concern you, Personal Trainer Sasha! _

“Um, nothing?” Before Catra could punch her superficially whitened smile, she remembered what she had told herself earlier. She pictured Entrapta swaying to her 104th listen to  _ All Night Long  _ and logging her present neurotransmitters into her recorder. Then there was Scorpia hanging those made up curtains to brighten up her room. Last but not least, Adora sitting in her passenger seat, hungover as hell and in those dumpy pajamas of her, her nose scrunching up as she laughed.  _ Be better. Be better. Just ignore Sasha. Is Sasha her name? Krystal? Megan? Maybe I should ask Adora, she’s the one that spends all her time in this dumb city. _

“And I’m back to Adora.”

“Huh?”

“Oh my God.”

Thank God that ignoring her backseat gremlins was just too fucking easy with Adora too obsess over. That dumb beautiful idiot had gone and turned her mind into a fucking Lana Del Rey ballad; now she had  _ this _ internal conflict to deal with, and as much as Catra liked conflict this- this was  _ bullshit _ .

It was bullshit that Catra’s seventh passenger only spoke Polish (Hordak had a lackee who was Polish; she actually taught Catra how to shave and then keep a razor under her tongue to scare people in high school) and when she got out, looked back at Catra, said “Lesbian,” and shut the door, and Catra’s first thought was to tell Adora about it the next time she saw her. It was bullshit that Catra wanted a  _ next time.  _ It was bullshit that Adora was talented, beautiful, and brimming with scathing wit and potential and that compared to her, Catra was literally nothing except a poor, shitty failure- the literal human equivalent of a migraine. It was bullshit that Adora made Catra laugh. It was bullshit that the chances Adora had some ulterior motive with her and that this was just another mind game Catra would have to claw her way out of was beyond a statistical significance that even Entrapta could comprehend. Bullshit that if she became Adora’s friend, she’d go straight back to being her nameless half limping along in the shadows. It was bullshit that even though Catra destroyed the Mustang, broke her ribs and gave herself whiplash, bullshit that Hordak kicked her out again, that stealing the car was worth those hours of overflowing happiness and that made just a few minutes with Adora worth it too.

Catra was still driving around the east side when nine p.m crawled around, and could feel the aura of a migraine setting in, but she  _ couldn’t _ stop or turn around to go home. The traffic lights were all starting to look the same. Soon the very shine of them would start burning her tired retinas. But Catra was stuck, driving around in a circle because she was trapped by this stupid cycle she’d locked herself in to. A bullshit cycle.

_ I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. I want to be with Adora. But I can’t be Adora’s shadow again. _

Hordak was right. Her curiosity- her emotions- were going to be the death of her. If Adora was this feeling, then this car was going to fucking crash.

_

_ adora 4:59 pm Multimedia Attachment _

__ _ I found another reference for you _

Catra stopped a foot from her apartment door, key bumping her Sea Hawk Friendship Bracelet as she stared at her phone, biting back a grin as she pulled out her phone to see Adora’s name on her screen. She dropped the plastic bag that had been digging into the crook of her elbow the whole stair climb up here onto the floor with a  _ thunk! _ and leaned against the wall. The tips of her stiletto claws hit the keys as she typed out a smug response to Adora’s “reference.”

_ Catra’s cell 5:01 _

__ ha ha very fucking funny princess. that’s the dumb cat potato meme. And it’s not even a fucking cat it’s a cat’s face phjotshopped onto a hamster

_ adora 5:01 pm _

   Wait it is?

   oh….

   But still you could use it as inspo. I’m thinking that scene where book adora tells book catra that she can’t come to the whispering woods with her? and catra’s all

Catra’s phone buzzed again in her hand and a Surprised Pikachu popped up in her inbox. Rolling her eyes, she texted back feeling a little to prideful:

_ Catra’s cell 5:02 pm _

__ no that’s book adora when book catra lets her fall off a cliff

_ Catra’s cell 5:03 pm _

__ also i know that one

step your game princess

_ adora 5:04 pm _

__ damn it! I thought that one of those would work! you’ve seriously seen both?

_ Catra’s cell 5:04 pm _

__ Yeah i live iin a shitty apartment not under a rock.

_ adora 5:05 pm _

__ Dang it!

i mean about the potato cat hamster not your living situation

__ I’m gonna find a meme you’ve never seen before! And then I’m gonna win and you’re gonna have to let me give you gas money!

Shaking her head, Catra jammed her key into her lock. “You’re so weird Adora.” But the smile on her face and the warmth spreading through her chest took the edge out of her words. Catra leaned down and picked her new supplies, about to hit the send button on a ‘oh you’re fucking on, princess,” as if they hadn’t been texting about dumb memes since one in the morning, when the conspiring voices of her roommates stopped her in her tracks.

“No!” gasped Scorpia, over doing some dramatic reaction as always, “She actually said that?”

_ They’re probably talking about some MegaMart thing.  _ Catra swallowed the odd sense of apprehension- see  _ this _ was the Adora effect, Catra was now overthinking fucking everything and her head was always on the brink of exploding from anxiety alone- as she walked into into her own apartment.

“I just played you the recording. Do you want me to play it again?”  _ They let her use the recorder while she’s on the clock again?  _ Before Entrapta could finish, the whirring of her pet recorder started up. Except Catra wouldn’t get to hear whatever juicy tidbit of gossip (since when did Trapta  _ gossip?  _ Ugh, probably some experiment) on that tape because Scorpia was incapable of keeping her big mouth shut. And yeah, lately it had been kind of lovable cause Catra was just a little less drunk on tequila and spite and little more drunk on someone’s stupid blue eyes and rainbow attitude, but god damn it. Catra kinda wanted to hear, since they were just gonna leave her out anyway

“Uh, yeah! I just- I can’t believe Adora said that! My mind is blown! Blown, Trapta! This- this is just so exciting!” Catra’s heart skipped a beat and jumped straight into her dry throat.  _ Oh fuck. _ Why… why were they talking about Adora? And  _ what  _ did Adora say to catch their limited attention that was so worth whispering about behind Catra’s fucking back?

A click and the recorder stopped.  _ Damn it! _ “It does make for an interesting social experiment. At Glimmer’s bakery, Bow referred to them several times in the kitchen- and not in the kitchen- as Team Catradora. I’ve modeled the name after that- Test Catradora.”

“Oh.” Scorpia’s response didn’t mirror their roommate’s excitement. “Entrapta, have you ever thought that it might not be a good idea to mess with Catra’s love life? It’s totally okay to experiment on strangers, but Catra’s our friend! I mean she is a human being and she has feelings, so I just- I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

“Oh, it’s  _ not _ .” Catra stepped into view, arms crossed. Seething, that was a good word for the anger she felt right now, the anger that had her assessing the pros and cons of throwing her fucking roommates out the fourth story window. Scorpia’s eyes widened and her whole body braced like Catra was going to fucking pounce at her. Entrapta, on the other hand, took her goggles off (and  _ why  _ was she wearing those indoors? What part of Catra’s bed frame was now fucking gone?) and waved like she hadn’t just royally messed up. “What the  _ hell  _ are you two talking about? And when were you gonna let me in on the fact that you’re practically planning my fucking wedding?”

“Ooh, a wedding!” Scorpia’s pained look turned to excitement in the blink of Catra’s twitching eye. “Okay, how do you feel about a fall theme? I think autumn would really capture the color scheme you and Adora share-”

“Scorpia! Jesus, I-” Catra stopped herself and took a deep breath in an attempt to suffocate her rage.  _ Be better. What good is it really gonna do if you scream at her? No matter how much you  _ really  _ want to... _ “You know what, I don’t give a shit. Do whatever you want.”

With that, she stormed past them and threw her shopping bag on the counter before throwing the fridge door open. “Autumn wedding theme? Like I’m  _ ever  _ getting married.” It’s not like Catra was in anything resembling a mood that would make her feel like talking to her roommates about Adora. They were not twelve and this was not a sleepover. Plus, they had already done their fair share of prying and had already used up their “Adora minutes” for the week. Catra stuck her hand in the fridge, fishing for something edible, when at the sound of a click Adora’s voice filtered through the static of tape. Stomach dropping, whole body reeling and frozen, Catra swore her anxiety had suddenly become enough to power the whole damn building.

_ “I still don’t see how that proves that I like Catra! God like? I-I sound like I’m in the sixth grade!” _

_ “Well you definitely have feelings for her.”  _ Rainbow cut in and stopped Adora. Catra scoffed, trying to ignore her shaking hands or rising blood pressure. When- what- the fuck? Where did Trapta get her oven mitts on this slap-in-the-face conversation and would it be cruel of Catra to crush her recorder with her bare hands just so she wouldn’t have to hear it anymore?

_ “Bow, I don’t have feelings for Catra.”  _ Catra bit her tongue. Her voice was so unmoving, filled with the same steeled confidence that drew Catra to Adora. Like a suicidal fly to an glowing electric bug zapper. Her gaze fell from the yellow light of the fridge to the tile floor. _   
_ _   
_ _ “Evidence states that you’re feeling something.”  _ Entrapta words kept this awful tirade going, _ “Your hands are shaking even though you ate a meal and the temperature in here is adequate, your pupils are dilated and your cheeks and breasts are flushed-” _ _   
_ _   
_ __ “Okay, that’s enough Entrapta!”

Catra shut the door with the flick of her wrist and the sound reverberated through the quiet apartment. She had about a million fucking thoughts  all raging and racing to get her mouth, but a major question stood out light a blaring red light. A really, shitty, painful question. Why the hell were her roommates- her  _ only  _ friends- indulging Adora like this?

A strained silence hung over them, only broken by Scorpia audibly swallowing. Catra, ready to fight- to scream, yell, push, prod anything,  _ say something damn it! _ \- was only held back when Entrapta hit the fast forward button. A an eternity of four seconds later, Adora’s words were back to tearing down Catra’s walls. This time for a different reason.

_ “Catra draws?”  _ Rainbow started. Oh, so they moved topics, but the topics were still equally embarrassing. Halle-fucking-lluah.

“ _ Yes.”  _ Entrapta again. Standing before her, Entrapta’s lips moved with her own words, like she listened to this tape over and over. Great. _ “She’s quite proficient.” _

_ “She’s amazing.”  _ Adora. Adora and her stupid ability to do strange and wonderful things (ugh, that sentiment was disgusting, right?) to Catra’s heart with just a few damn words. Adora.

Catra brought her hand to her face, her fingers curling up into a tight fist against her cheek. The stinging grip of her nails in her skin was the only thing keeping her anchored in this sucky reality. The reality where she wasn’t sure what she even felt for her long lost friend and her first love. Her quiet whispered words just dripped with that classic Adora kindness. The type of kindness that was addictive to broken, dysfunctional people like Catra, and that’s what made Adora’s words dangerous.  Every time Adora said something nice to her, of the heart or from her soul or whatever,  _ every time  _ Catra had this pointless inward battle. Pointless because she could not turn away from the light that was Adora, however blinding and however many migraines it resulted in. And so she kept coming back to a fight and feeling that was tearing her apart from the inside out.

_ Adora doesn’t care about anyone who’s not in her little sparkly clique!  _ That line was ingrained in her brain like a fucking tattoo. Considering she spent just the same amount of time obsessing over it that it would take to give herself another tattoo, shading, coloring, detail and all.

_ “Catra, be careful! You said you had a migraine, don’t hurt yourself!”  _ Adora had practically demanded of her that night when Catra gave into her self destructive behaviors. That night that going back to Adora on the upper west side was practically self destructive behavior in and of itself. That night Adora stole something because for a cute ass in a tight pant suit, she was clever and cunning as hell.

_ Adora only feels guilty about leaving. She doesn’t care that Weaver did all that you.  _ Boy, did that rationalization pack a punch. As hard as Catra was working her ass of at moving past all those years with Weaver, to just stay in the present which was exhausting enough, just that logic alone basically flung her back into every emotion she was sick of drowning in. She didn’t want to be angry anymore, but didn’t want to let Adora any closer. This feeling was her closest weapon. Blame her for everything. Blame her for things she didn’t really have that much to do with anyway.

Adora’s words were weapons of her own, and she sure as hell was not going down without a fight.  _ “Catra I’m sorry...I know you probably don’t want another apology but… I knew what she was doing and I never tried to stop her. You don’t have to forgive me.”  _ Catra didn’t. This wasn’t some Lifetime movie, so unfortunately shit didn’t work that way. Trauma didn’t work that way. What she had done instead was taken that cancerous hate and channeled it into the ghosts of Hordak and Weaver. They would never ever have her forgiveness, but maybe… maybe Adora deserved another chance. This time, this time she had more control right? No one was going to swoop in, pull them apart again, and leave another gaping hole in Catra… right?

_ Oh, so what makes you think that she’s not gonna be number one and you’re gonna be her less memorable sidekick? Just like you  _ always  _ were.  _ Adora the straight A student and Catra the Latina girl always cheating. (She  _ wasn’t,  _ it wasn’t her fault that English was hard, and her math and science grades were  _ always  _ better!) Adora the athlete and Catra her tag in. Adora the funniest, the prettiest, most well liked girl in the whole orphanage and Catra, the dirty little sneak who was only ever good at getting in trouble.  _ You know Adora’s gonna get that book published cause she’s actually talented at something. And where does that leave you? Her dumb poor friend who dropped out of community college? Only good at things she can do better?  _ Those thoughts didn’t hurt at all, no…

_ “They’re amazing, by the way. _ ” Adora had said when she finally brought up the drawings that night. It was both a win and loss; Catra wasn’t exactly a big fan of vulnerability and her art was pretty much her soul.  _ “I hung them up above my desk and I look at them when I get stuck or frustrated, which is a lot.”  _ Adora… Adora liked her art. Hung up her dumb drawings that were sucky and far from the best Catra could do. They made her feel inspired and yeah, maybe because she was just kind of staring at herself but this was still a big deal, right? Like, a really big fucking deal.

When Adora had said that to Catra in the car, back at it with her wild displays of vulnerability-  _ we get it Adora! You’re better at this than me!-  _ Catra’s first thought as a knee jerk reaction was  _ that’s gay.  _ If she hadn’t been so wonderstruck or heart fucked Catra would have blurted that out loud. To Adora’s face. But her stupid racing heartbeat and Cat Got Your Tongue moment got the best of her and actually saved her ass for once.

And it made Catra think (and that was big, because not a lot did). All this time Catra was scared out of her mind that she and Adora would fall back into that old pattern of theirs where Adora was the saint and Catra the sinner, but that compliment pulled back the curtain on something. Yes, Adora was fucking oozing talent, only it was in one, or maybe a few areas- her writing- but that was pretty much it. Catra wasn’t some sadistic eighteen year-old anymore who wanted any girl with blonde hair to fail at life, so it was pointless to throw a fit and chase what they had away out of petty jealousy. Adora championed heartbreak, grief, loss, and all of that other shit Catra couldn’t make herself confront into an amazing story and she deserved to have that recognized. Catra  _ wanted  _ Adora to be recognized. She didn’t like sad, down on her luck, always on the verge of tears or throwing up Adora. She didn’t want to see her like that. Catra wouldn’t keep Adora from success if it meant she never,  _ ever,  _ had to see Adora cry again.

Also, Adora couldn’t draw to save her fucking life. Oh, she never could, but it was nice to know that she never had chased it down and forced it to be something she was a sparkling prodigy at. Catra would always have that spotlight- especially with Adora practically throwing her in it with demands she go back to school and pulling shit like this where she hung up her freaking drawings. There was a weird sort of mutual support. Their abilities - or hobbies, as Hordak would dub them- complimented each other… actually really well.  

_ That’s what Adora saw when we were kids.  _ Adora saw the ways their personalities, like jagged little puzzle pieces, lined up with each other, in her eyes, the best way. Maybe that’s why all of Catra’s jealousy and pent up grudges stayed in Adora’s blind spot; she never saw Catra as anything less than her equal, she was just a kid who liked getting attention.  _ Every  _ kid on the damn planet liked getting attention and most would do whatever it took because adults made  _ everything _ a game. (Except for maybe Bow’s parents, that guy was freakily well adjusted compared to the rest of them.) In Adora’s mind, they were a team and Catra was starting to realize that Adora had been ripped in half when they were seperated. Because Adora had always seen it as  _ us-against-the-world,  _ it made a lot of fucking sense why she couldn’t handle  _ you-against-me. _

They had that in common.

So yeah, they could move forward. Right? If this competition was just in Catra head, she could let this drive go a little while longer? Before she was back to running on empty.

_ Adora doesn’t value you. She just pities you.  _ That was the next stage that came after the whole art thing. The be-angry-with-her-because-she-feels-bad-for-you part because Catra didn’t need pity from anyone, certainly from not some part time bakery worker who could barely walk in heels. (Seriously if this- whatever  _ this _ was- kept going between them Catra was gonna have to bring in professional help from one of Scorpia’s queens to fucking help her because Adora was going to hurt herself and Catra couldn't watch that because it would not be funny anymore).  _ You’re just some project she can use to prove she’s some good Samaritan. _

Catra probably would’ve gotten stuck there for the rest of fucking time but then Adora had to go all business partner (a look she wore well in that damn suit) and offer her a job as illustrator for She-Ra. Oh, so  _ that’s _ what she had been building up to this whole time, that’s why she’d been suffocating Catra in her nervous energy this whole ride home. Adora’s style of dropping bombshells on her didn’t exactly bode well with Catra’s mistrust of literally  _ everything  _ (why thank you Hordak) and she only had questions, not concrete thoughts, as Adora succeeded in blowing up her brain for like the third time that night.

_ What? _

_ Why me? _

_ It’s her dumb book! _

_ I don’t even like it that much! _

_ Okay, I do- shut the fuck up! _

_ God what kind of game is she playing? _

_ I’m surprised she didn’t spam me with texts about it. _

And that’s really the only reason Catra let her continue and didn’t kick her out and leave a boot print in her side. But of course Adora just had to dodge her question about why on Earth would she give up her  _ half _ of her freaking profit for some low life like Catra by saying  _ “Well, it’s not like you would take money from me.” _

That fucking sneak. She was getting good at this. Or, Adora was always good at this and Catra built her up to be a pushover cause then it would be easier to ignore her stupid enchanting smile and dorky laugh. It wasn’t. Now Adora was brash and forceful because of her damn intellect,  _ and  _ she was hot.

God, Catra was fucked.

_ “This way you earn the money yourself. You’re putting in the work and you’re going to get the credit, well  _ if  _ you want to do this. I’m not helping you Catra. I’m asking for  _ yours _.” _

Well damn, when she put it that way… how was she supposed to say no?

Catra wanted to say yes. She’d be a fucking idiot to turn down any sort of employment that didn’t involve full on debasing herself or just accepting the cash Scorpia “covertly” tried to stuff under Catra’s pillow when she thought she wasn’t looking like she was some kind of tooth fairy. Whether Catra would actually use her brain when spending it, she still needed the money. To convince Scorpia to move out and finally have a nicer apartment than their hellhole, or in case Entrapta was late one too many times… or to go school.

Then there was the hopeful look in Adora’s ocean eyes. The one that made Catra want to scream yes, yes she’d do it, she’d do  _ anything _ just stop using those Bambi eyes cause it was making her stomach- and heart- do weird things! But Catra had doubts, like she always did. Because when Adora looked at her like this there was  _ that  _ feeling again, the one where Catra didn’t feel so fucking empty, and commiting to something with her meant that this drive would continue. It meant that the light at the end of this tunnel was just their blazing crash.

Because curiosity killed the cat.  _ Right Hordak? _

Catra told Adora she’d think about it. ‘Cause that was the result of the instinct of distrust condition programmed into her by Weaver and Hordak, and the growing desire to see Adora smile (cheesy as hell, she’d be the first to admit) and the desire to be the one that made Adora smile.

Now standing in her kitchen and locked between the dumb, expectant stares of Scorpia and Entrapta after the clip of Adora calling her  _ amazing  _ of all goddamn things, Catra had to have that whole fucking conversation in her head  _ again.  _ As if she hadn’t fought this mental battle like fourteen times in the last hour!

_ Adora doesn’t care about you! Adora is kind and she cares. Adora doesn’t like you! Adora messed up as a kid but it doesn’t make her a bad person. Adora is using you! Adora makes you feel like you’re not so fucking empty. _

Oh God, it was getting really fucking crowded in her head. It’s not like her brain needed another reason to give her a migraine, but what the hell, they were in this deep. Catra’s thoughts all just seem to encompass the despicable mind games Adora was without a doubt planning, and in a twist of irony, it was only the idea of Adora that kept Catra from throwing Entrapta’s recorder out the fourth story window and biting Scorpia’s head clean off. Even pissing her off, Adora pacified Catra in some backwards way.

“Entrapta…” Catra started as slow as possible. The last thing she wanted was for her voice to betray just how fucking batshit crazy she was actually feeling. Then it would go from ‘let’s answer Catra honestly’ to ‘lets lie to keep her from killing us.’ “Where do you get that?”

Scorpia sent their other roommate a “abort mission!’ but as usual, Entrapta ignored subtle things like that. For once, Catra was grateful she did. “Glimmer’s bakery, of course! While I was back fixing their Smart Oven, quite an unusual yet delicate machine, its wiring was thought out yet still problematic- poorly planned as someone of your intelligence might refer to it- and it posed an incredible challenge-”

“Entrapta! We’re talking about Adora, not the dumb oven.” Catra couldn’t believe she said that out loud. During the grueling past two weeks, Adora- or any discussion of how cool or pretty she sounded “objectively” (Entrapta’s words,  _ not  _ Catra’s) was- was off the fucking table. Catra  _ thought  _ that was still relevant when she wasn’t around, but apparently she was wrong. And now they were all stuck in their gross kitchen like a bunch of assholes just so they could talk about Adora.

In her back pocket, Catra’s phone buzzed.  _ Speaking of Adora. _

Oh for fuck’s sake, they’d practically summoned her.

“Right! Adora! So as I was fixing the wiring in the oven-” Catra glared daggers at her to keep her from going on another pointless rant, “-Adora came in to have dinner. Glimmer, Bow, and Adora began speaking of an incident that occured while I was occupied. She said that you, Catra, didn’t want to kiss her-”

“You tried to kiss Adora?!” gasped Scorpia, bringing her hands to her face and doing that weird, excited dance of hers that never failed to be a sign that she was about to blow this  _ way  _ out of proportion. “ _ Wait-  _ why didn’t you kiss her? Did something get in the way? Oh, you have to tell me everything!”

_ Yeah and it happened more than once.  _ “That’s not important, Scorpia,” growled Catra through gritted teeth.

How much more fucking obvious could Catra be that she did not want to discuss the impairing urge she had to pin Adora against the nearest wall and kiss her so damn hard that they drowned in each other?

“This kickstarted an interrogation by Bow and Glimmer regarding Adora’s romantic feelings concerning Catra,” finished Entrapta, luckily for Catra, who had to take her jacket off.  _ Damn it Adora. _

“Okay… so why do you have it?” Catra was still so fucking lost. “And why were you showing it to Scorpia?”

“Well, I was recording the whole time. I needed to accurately document my findings and consequential adjustments to the Smart Oven.”

“And when I came home she was listening to the recordings and that’s how I found out,” Scorpia added and Catra let a long sigh. Why wasn’t she surprised?

“I was interested in preserving the secrecy of my experiment, modeling, of course, Bow’s behavior, but Scorpia strongholded me into discussing this with her.” Entrapta said this as if it was a completely normal thing to say and Catra resisted the urge to whack her upside all her freaking purple hair. Scorpia looked down at the floor in obvious shame and guilt tore at Catra’s stomach.  _ Be better. Right. _

“Nice try, ‘Trapta, but you’re both in trouble.” Catra crossed her arms and stuck her hip out. As pissed as she was, Catra was no longer in a place where it felt justified to scream at her friends. That was progress right? Even if she wanted to scream and punch the refrigerator so hard she indented it? “This is an invasion of Adora’s privacy-”

“Aw, you care about Adora’s privacy!” Scorpia clasped her hands together.

“Shut the hell up Scorpia, you’re not off the hook either.”

“Oh right.”

“This is also an invasion of my privacy! C’mon guys! Do I just need to wear a fucking sign on my forehead that says talking about Adora is off fucking limits?” Catra threw her hands in the air, catching the plastic of her shopping bag on her nail.  _ Shit! _

Entrapta pulled her recorder out again, the red button pressed down a big red flag.“But she’s not off  _ fucking _ limits?”

“I’m gonna get your name kicked off the goddamn lease, Entrapta!” Where did the plastic knife now in Catra’s hand come from? And what other manners of trash where in her back pockets?

“Ha, that- that was a good one- sorry.” Scorpia chuckled before looking anywhere but at Catra when she turned on her with the plastic knife.

Entrapta’s eyes narrowed and Catra saw her digging through her own overall pockets. Catra’s grip on the knife tightened as Entrapta pulled out her  _ No-Prob-Llama  _ notebook with a sticker on it that read “ _ this is actually an Alpaca”  _ in her hand writing, pulled a pencil from its rings, and stuffed her  _ still  _ recording recorder down her sports bra. “Interesting… subject sees other subject as provocative. Does not approve in sexual intercourse but her body language and dilated pupils would denote other wise-”

“What the  _ fuck? _ ” Catra’s voice jumped two fucking octaves. Yeah, it would help her intimidating factor a lot if she wasn’t squeaking like a dog’s chew toy, thank you very much!

“Denial points to certain feelings for test subject two. My guess is strong feelings. More analysis is needed to determine but current evidence states these are not platonic feelings. Sexual ones? Romantic ones? My thesis: both.”

“Chills, Entrapta, literal chills.” Scorpia shook out her arms to show as much, bumping Catra into the fridge, while Entrapta continued writing down her “findings” at a furious pace. Probably because she knew at any second Catra was gonna rip the notebook out of her gloved hands and tear it to fucking shreds.

“You actually think I have feelings for Adora?”  _ Adora was right- we do sound like we’re in the 6th freaking grade.  _ They both nodded. “You’re serious?” They nodded, again.  _ Oh shit, am I this see through?  _ “Are you guys high? Drunk? Is Entrapta doing that thing again where she slips caffeine tablets into our food and drinks throughout the day? Cause I swear to God, there’s  _ nothing _ going on between me… and- and Adora!”  _ So much for trying to not be so fucking transparent. _

“Hmm, that was what Adora said. Word for word. Then I believe she retracted her statement when she spoke to Bow after you and her came in from outside.”  _ Does she just enjoy doing this to people?  _ Catra’s eyes felt like they were about to pop out of her fucking skull.

_ What does she mean… Adora retracted her statement? Why- why the hell am I thinking about this? _

That street light was looking a lot closer and Catra could sense the impact they were doomed for. God damn it! Nothing with Adora was straight forward, was it? It was needlessly complicated as hell and messy! Right now of all moments, Catra wanted things to just be fucking simple. Simple like they were just working on a book together, sharing ideas and dumb memes, texting all the time, intruding on each other’s personal lives, making even dumber bets, talking during the middle of the night, carpooling, sneaking touches, making weird excuses to be close, trying to kiss the other- oh  _ fuck  _ Catra liked Adora.

Like  _ had feelings  _ for Adora. And wanted to date her and all that gross romantic couple shit. Wanted to see her smile and make her happy because she actually cared about that dumb Bright Mooner who was dumb enough to care about her.

_ How could I be so fucking stupid?  _ Catra ran her nails through her curls until all ten of them pierced her scalp. The broken one hurt like hell.  _ I didn’t sign up to do her book because of money! Jesus fucking Christ I’m the biggest idiot of the year. _

Not only were they about to collide head on at full speed, but Catra had taken her fucking seat belt off and then turned the damn airbags off.  _ Curiosity killed the cat.  _ Catra was gonna die chasing a dumb beautiful blonde and it was gonna hurt like fucking hell.

So why wasn’t that a good enough reason to stop?

“Uh, Catra… are you okay? You kinda look like you’re about to explode.” Scorpia took a step forward but Catra barely registered it. ‘Cause she was about to explode.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” wheezed Catra, right before turning on Entrapta so fast she startled her off the kitchen counter and into Scorpia’s arms. “ _ Why  _ would you show me that, Entrapta?”

“Um, well, you seemed distraught and usually this makes things better-” Entrapta stuttered and just the sight of her twiddling her fingers and awkwardly pulling at her hair had guilt barreling toward Catra like a fucking train. “-if I gave you the all the information instead- of with holding it like you were- originally angry about…”

Catra sighed and slumped into the fridge. There was no winning here, but that wasn’t her friends’ fault. After coming at at them with plastic cutlery she could understand why they acted the way they did. “Okay yeah... I’m sorry I yelled at you. That was shitty of me.”

“Woah!” Scorpia lifted Entrapta back onto the counter, who thankfully had stopped yanking at her purple pigtails. “You got a sober apology from Catra, ‘Trapta!”

_ I should like… buy her more of those mini cupcakes from Glimmer’s bakery.  _ Catra swallowed.  _Or I should just be better._

Entrapta didn’t look affected for long and her shoulders drained of tension when Scorpia started talking- or  _ trying  _ to talk- about the odds of an apology from Catra sober or drunk and it only took like a minute to get them talking about drunkness being some independent variable before Catra threw her head back with an annoyed growl. “Ugh, if I try to keep a lid on lashing out, will you guys stop talking about me like I’m some human lab rat?”

“Oh, you mean like Eleven on Stranger Things?” asked Scorpia, full on dropping her previous conversation with Entrapta mid sentence.

_ That  _ brought up a whole new set of questions. “You have a Netflix account, Scorpia?”

“Yeah, everyone at my studio was getting really into Orange is the New Black and Santa Clarita Diet, oh man the new season,  _ so  _ good!- but yeah, you know I don’t like being left out!”

“On  _ what,  _ our shitty TV?” Catra threw her hand out to gesture toward the kitchen, hit the fridge door, and broke  _ another  _ nail.

“No, I watch on my phone. Marshmallow gave me his password, oh and they have this download feature and you can watch  _ without  _ wi-fi-”

“Ugh!” Catra threw her hands back in her hair. This was way past pointless. Now this was borderline idiotic and a definite waste of her time and energy. But of course Scorpia didn’t see it that way and she just had to look hurt and Catra’s guilt came and smacked her in the face.  _ Damn it.  _ She couldn’t stand to see Scorpia hurting or Entrapta panicking any more than she could stand to see Adora cry.  _ Fuck!  _ “Shit Scorpia, I didn’t mean- I’m sorry, god why is this so hard? You can keep talking about Netflix if that’s what you want but just I have a migraine okay-” So much for doing this truthfully and without excuses.

“It’s okay, Catra.” Scorpia gave a weak smile. “Honestly, I haven’t seen you this worked up in a really long time. And I know you said you didn’t want to talk about Adora-” She threw her hands in surrender the second Catra whirled on her, but she didn’t back down. “-but I think it might help! We’re always here, you know.”

“Not everything is about Adora!” that crutch was almost instinctual at this point.

“This is.” Entrapta mumbled. “And I don’t understand most emotional nuance, but this is about Adora.”

“You did kinda attack us with a plastic fork when we said you had feelings for her,” Scorpia pointed out.

“It was a knife,” whispered Catra, hugging herself. God, she felt like a fucking jackass. A dumb jackass who lashed out at people who were trying to help her. Like she continued to lash out at Adora. But Adora, Scorpia, Entrapta… these were the people who kept coming back even when she treated them like shit, and when they deserved so much better...  _ Wonder how long that will last,  _ a snarky part of her whispered, the defensive, hurting part, and something inside her shouted back  _ not long if you keep this shit up!  _ “Okay look. I’m just really fucking confused, okay? And I shouldn’t be taking it out on you guys but I’m not comfortable having everyone involved right now?” her last words hung in the air between them. Scorpia and Entrapta exchanged a glance.  _ Okay, guess that’s not good enough.  _ “Look if I promise to keep you guys in the loop about Adora- and, and no more experiments- can you lay off me for just a little while?”

By the ecstatic look on their faces, this was the jackpot they were looking for.  _ Honestly, what is so fucking exciting about me and Adora?  _ “Do you think you’re gonna date Adora?” Scorpia asked, doing some weird little dance and wiggling her eyebrows in a way that made Catra want to reach for her plastic knife again.

“Scorpia, I just told you to lay off!” Catra threw her hands up in the air. “And dating Adora sounds like a one way ticket to ending up in Koreatown at two in the fucking morning singing karaoke!”  _ I am already up at 2 am anyway-AAAAAGH! STOP THINKING ABOUT DATING ADORA!  _ Catra tried to swallow the aggravating feeling creeping up her throat. Catra was not the dating type, not the flowers and chocolate and jewelry type, or the dancing in the rain all delicate and fearless like… but if there was anyone she could do that rather-eat-glass type of stuff with… it just  _ might  _ be Adora. Yeah, dating Adora sounded really fucking lame. Take her karaoke example. Ending up in Koreatown in the dead of night, trying to sing over each other and turning it into some goofy competition. Dating Adora sounded like afternoon trips on wine trains - wait, they both were dirt poor-  _ sneaking  _ onto wine trains and starting food fights with everyone else on the train. Dating Adora sounded like wandering around Bright Moon cause they couldn’t get a reservation at some fancy restaurant she’d been dying to go, catching her when she tripped in her heels, and ending up at some Chinese place, eating and talking until they got kicked out. Dating Adora sounded dumb but real, genuine and actual, not some fabricated bullshit because Adora was genuine. Dating Adora… kinda sounded like coming home and getting to stay there for once.

_ Well that’s cliche as hell. Also, do I have legitimate ideas for dates now? Who the fuck am I? _

Catra hated this feeling. Hated that she had something she wanted to give to Adora that Adora could never need or want. And Catra hated that she hated it.

“Oohh Koreatown!” Scorpia chimed in and clapped her hands together.

Entrapta had an awkward response for a completely different reason, “I’m banned from there,” she whispered, a tiny smile back on her face.  _ Oh Entrapta, what havoc did you wreak on those poor unexpecting people? And why the hell didn’t I get to see it? _

“You guys are weird…” Catra trailed off. Her emotions, the ones spurned by the evil thoughts of dating Adora ( _ Adora, Adora, Adora…)  _ had warped her brain the same way a bad acid trip would. Hopes for coming down were back on the horizon though. Right up until they dreamed up some other fantasy for her and Adora.  _ Adora, Adora, Adora… _

“Well, we’re always here to help! Whatever you need, wild cat.” Wow, been a while since Scorpia brought out Catra’s old nickname, one that dated back to Catra’s first few weeks at MegaMart, when they hadn’t ironed out real boundaries and Scorpia was pulling out all sorts of desperate moves to prove she could be Catra’s friend. But they had been kinda chummy lately.

“I know, in case I need to talk about Adora,” Catra rolled her eyes as subtle as she could manage. They’d been over this  _ a thousand times  _ since Scorpia made the almost fatal mistake of going through Catra’s texts and found out about Adora. “But I don’t  _ want _ to talk about Adora right now.”  _ Adora, Adora, Adora… _

Shrugging, Scorpia went for Catra’s shopping bag still on the counter. “Okay, wild cat. Hey, what’s in the bag? Oooh, Melvin’s Art’s supplies-”

“Ah-ha,” Catra flicked her hand away. “No more digging through my stuff! And- and nice change of subject Scorpia, real classy.” Another eye roll.

“What? You said you didn’t want to talk about Adora!”

“I  _ don’t _ .”

“Then what’s in the bag?”

Catra let out protest that was have groan half growl. “Ugh, you sound like a cop. It’s just some art supplies, no big deal or whatever.”  _ That doesn’t mean they’re not gonna make it a big deal out it. Whatever, it’s a lot fucking better than talking about  _ Adora.  _ Adora, Adora, Adora… _

“Is this for the project you committed with subject number- I mean, Adora?” asked Entrapta. As her bright eyes widened and she leaned closer to the bag, Catra pulled it further away. One step to vulnerability at a time.

“Yeah. I ran out of paper in my last sketchbook so I just got some stuff to hold me over.” Oh that was a big fat fucking lie. Catra was only trying to play it cool, you know, in case one of these loveable dingbats got wind of how freaking excited Catra was to be back to art and to be illustrating all these weird, kinda dorky things. And it wasn’t just some stuff to hold her over for it a little while. Having earned over 200 dollars alone doodling on the arms of Adora’s rich friends (okay, maybe having rich friends  _ did  _ have some perks) with a fucking ink pen, Catra put a little toward the apartment, tipped the ladies at her nail salon a huge chunk extra, and then she spent the rest on herself. Yeah, it wasn’t a massive amount of money like what was actually needed to buy that really nice shit in the store, but it was much better than the dollar store crap she’d been scrapping by with. Now armed with a professional’s sketch book and a real pencil set, Catra could actually give Adora- the  _ project,  _ everything it deserved and needed.

That was far from the attitude Catra had started with. Like, fucking miles from it. And it was only Scorpia who paved the way into making Adora’s book something she wanted to do.

Catra swung back and forth between Adora’s project about just as many times as she swung back and forth between Adora herself. Sometimes so hard she gave herself fucking whiplash. But Hordak’s dumb  _ curiosity killed the cat  _ rang in her head like the loudest damn bell and kept her from making a freaking decision, kept her from giving Adora an answer, and as the days turned into a solid week, all Catra could focus on were the pros and cons of working with the gorgeous literal angel she was actively stringing along.

Pro #1, money. Duh. Con #1, was it enough money?

Catra came close to decking herself for asking such a stupid question. Money was money. Hadn’t enough years couch surfing and suffering through minimum wage taught her to jump at the chance? Except when it came to pursuing an apprenticeship or going to school- which was already daunting as hell, not to mention overwhelming in a way that made her want to fucking cry- it probably wouldn’t be enough. But working through school was always part of the fantastical, out of reach, plan. Maybe whatever paycheck she cashed could act as a supplement.

Pro #2, Adora was a freaking genius and her book was pretty damn good. Con #2, she still might not get published.

And that would be the biggest crime of the fucking century, but Catra wasn’t stupid. Hordak’s pragmatic nature hadn’t failed to rub off on her outlook on life (or in some way,  _ ruin  _ her outlook on life). Big corporations like these publishers were not interested in new ideas- Catra learned that the hard way when Scorpia cornered her and made her watch the new ‘live action’ Lion King Trailer- or anything with queer subtext. And Adora’s writing barely fringed on subtext and at some points it was just text.

Pro #3, Working on the book would give Catra a practical reason to go back to art. Con #3, Catra was not a professional.

Catra had spent the last decade and half teaching herself how to draw because everyone else around her was a fucking dunce when it came to picking up pencil. That didn’t make Catra a professional, not by the longest shot. Adora would need a book cover, and in Catra’s head that cover had to be done digitally. Not something she sketched out and they put through the library scanner. She doubted it would take her long to figure out how to do it, but it’s not like she had the tools. So if Catra agreed, then she would have to be upfront about her shortcomings. Catra was  _ great  _ at that.

Pro #4, she’d be working with Adora for an unforeseeable amount of time. Con #5, she’d be working with Adora for an unforeseeable amount of time.

That one spoke for itself. Unfortunately.

Pro #5, Catra would get a chance to practice drawing a wide variety of whatever Adora dreamed up. Con #5, Catra would be forced to face Weaver and Hordak, to put them on paper the same way Adora did. But Adora was stronger than she was and as pathetic as it sounded, Catra didn’t know if she ready to face the past she was running from.

_ But I could give it a shot. That way I could be honest with Adora, and if I can’t do it, then I’m fucking wimp and she’ll find someone who can actually produce what they said they could. _

She was kind of the Adora in this situation, in a way. That was fucking weird.

So that’s how Scorpia stumbled in on Catra at three in morning, crouched on her bed and surrounded by balled up drawings. Catra’s hands flew in a furious blur of grey lines, black smudges, and pink eraser, as she tried- for like the 45th time- to draw Adora’s robot redinition of her foster father and latest abuser. His limbs were chunky and out of proportion, the shading a disaster cause her light was coming from a million places, and his face was a just a fucking disaster. She couldn’t do this. She’d have to tell Adora that she failed, like she always, always did. “God damnit!” Catra screeched, throwing the book to the other end of her bed. It landed with a  _ Pff!  _ onto a pile of discarded Shadow Weaver ‘concept designs.’

“Woah, hey kiddo, why- why are you throwing things? And cursing? ‘Trapta slip you caffeine again?” Scorpia’s gentle voice interrupted her moment of rage, and before Catra knew it, her roommate was standing over her.

“S’nothing.” Catra tore at the skin of her face trying to wipe both her nose and eyes.

Limbs too tired to move and body already bitching at her, Catra didn’t bother to stop Scorpia from picking up her discarded sketchbook. “Oh, this is cool. Pretty different from what you normally do and I gotta say, pretty cool you’re branching out.”

Catra only hugged her knee tighter, bumping her forehead against the fabric of her jeans. “Is it a tattoo design?”

“No, it’s for Adora’s book.” she didn’t really think about her response. It was automatic. Exhaustion, physical and emotional, took over her usual defenses, greatly limiting her ability to give a fuck.

“Adora’s writing a book?” Scorpia perked up, shifting the whole landscape of Catra’s bed and catapulting her two feet as the other woman plopped down with the enthusiasm of a sugar high child. “That’s so cool! What’s it about?”

That’s how Catra, eyes too heavy to care what she was doing, let Scorpia in on the whole She Ra thing. The whole debacle delighted her roommate,  _ shocker _ . She held onto every word with wide eyes as Catra walked her through the plot and character details. By this point, she knew the whole thing backwards and forwards; she was starting to see Swift Wind and Sea Hawk in his pirate ensemble haunting her in her brief dreams. Didn’t come as much surprise that Scorpia, who already loved Adora from their brief text conversation, decided Adora was her favorite person ever after learning that the authoress dubbed her both a princess  _ and  _ a force captain (“I’ve never been a princess before! Or a high ranking military officer at the same time! Gosh, her mind… how do you think she knows those were like, always my dreams?” “You’re still a bad guy, Scorp.” “Yeah, but so are you. And Entrapta too. We’re all together! Huh, how cool is that?”). Then they ended up on the super fun ending note that Catra was gonna have to quit the project before she even took the job cause of where she got herself stuck: stupid Hordak and Shadow Weaver.

“Is that Hordak?” Scorpia pushed the sketchbook back into Catra’s arms. Catra yawned and nodded. “Hmm… he looks like a clown.”

Catra snapped up out of her tired stupor so hard her neck popped. “Thank you! For that input! Ugh, it’s just like, why is this so fucking hard? I can’t draw stupid bitchy Shadow Weaver either. God, that name is  _ so _ dumb.”  

“Have you tried drawing any of the other characters? Sounds like there’s a whole bunch to choose from and that might be easier than going for the big guns-oh I know, you can draw me! My character! I could model...” suggested Scorpia. Catra shot her down the second the words were out of her mouth.

“I’ve tried that before, you don’t ever sit still!”

“Right,” she nodded. “Well, what about Adora? I mean she’s the main character, other than you- why don’t you just start with her and work your way up?” Damn Scorpia and her emotional intelligence. At this rate Catra would be doing the project. Pushing off her impending failure until another day.

“I guess.” Catra sighed. As Scorpia walked away, still jabbering about how excited she was to read this, Catra tore Clown Hordak out and balled him up, enjoying the way the paper crunched under her sore knuckles and the crinkling as she crushed his penciled face into destruction. Then on a brand new blank page, a fresh start, Catra began to draw Adora’s familiar features (Adora’s bright face and ocean eyes were what she saw when she closed hers). The agonizing tension in her shoulders melted away and her fingers relaxed. Something else took over her. Something calmer, something like stability, not that Catra had ever known what the fuck that felt like.

Scorpia’s voice floated in from the kitchen and cut into Catra’s peaceful dissociation. “Hey wildcat! How’s it going in there? Any better? You sound a lot less ragey, but I made some herbal tea if you want some. Sleepy time tea with chamomile, the good stuff. It’s my favorite, really- really knocks me right out, you know?”

“Yeah, sure.” Catra mumbled, sticking the pencil in her mouth. But her focus was a million miles away from Scorpia and her probably really gross tea. Instead it was on her new sketch of Adora, the one that had just sort of… happened. She was not in the driver’s seat for what she had just done.

The soft lines that so contrasted the dark and cutting edges that Catra could only produce earlier weren’t even of  _ She-Ra _ , so that was interesting. Also, it wasn’t even of Adora in the book that Catra had read about over and over and over, every night since the manuscript had been sent her way, right until she fell asleep in the glitching glow of her laptop. Rather than her issued red Horde Jacket and white sleeved shirt, Catra had drawn Adora in that pink hoodie that Catra kinda just wanted to bury her head in. ( _ Lame-shut up.)  _ And that uptight pony tail of a whiny know-it-all was down and flowing over shoulders, framing her already stupidly beautiful face in an even stupider beautiful way.

_ Ohhh fuck.  _ Catra drew Adora like she’d been in the car that morning she’d gone to drop the notebook back off. The same morning when Catra realized Adora was making her feel whole and there was only so much time before Catra completely fucked it up for both of them. Destroyed it like she destroyed that beautiful Mustang.  _ Yeah I guess I’m good at that. Destroying beautiful things. _

A mug was set by her on the window pane, and Catra looked up with hazy eyes from Adora’s scrunched nose on the coarse paper. “Oooh, that’s looking really good. Is that Adora?”

Catra knew exactly where this was heading. “Gosh, she’s soooo pretty.” And there it was. “Huh, I can see why you’ve been so obsessed with her. I mean, I got this way with Ramona-”

“Woah, woah, what the  _ fuck? _ ” Catra’s draw dropped.

But that just went over Scorpia’s head, big surprise there. Raising her eyebrows and bringing her ‘I LIKE BIG MUTTS’ mug- it had a pitbull on it- to her lips, she asked, “Oh I didn’t tell you about me and Ramona?”

“No! The whole thing- you think I’m  _ obsessed?  _ With Adora?” she stuttered the last part, her voice catching on Adora’s name.  _ Oh God here we fucking go. _

“Did I say obsessed?”

“Ughhhhhh.”

“Hmm. Sorry I kinda lost track of what we were talking about after I brought up Ramona.” her roomate shrugged. “Man, she really messed me up… hey, do you think I should call her?”

“You  _ just  _ said she messed you up, also it’s like four in the fucking morning.” The only other person up with them was probably Entrapta working the night shift, bothering her coworkers with that song Spongebob sings about the nightshift ( _ shit, do I miss that? Nah.)  _ and Adora. Which Catra only knew because they’d been texting up until about 2 in the morning when she disappeared, which Catra knew meant she was full on in her writing.  _ I know all that stuff? God damnit.  _ That’s why Catra had tried to draw all this shit in the first place. If Adora could do it, then so could she. Her eyes flickered back to her sketchbook. Okay, scratch that. If Adora could do it- and they’d see at the end of this when she later pulled up google docs to drift off if Adora  _ did  _ do it- then Catra could do it  _ sort of. _

“So I know ‘Trapta took all those sleeping supplements that I bought for one of her experiments and I, kinda, you know… threw out all the alcohol... “ Catra looked up at her with a despondent look. “But the tea should help you sleep. You might wanna drink it in case Emily thinks its coffee and drinks it again.”

Catra snorted at the memory of that damn rat scittering all over the living room while Entrapta begged her to get back in her jacket pocket, chasing her around with a spoonful of peanut butter. But then her shoulder relaxed again and Catra brought her sketchbook back into her lap. “Actually… I think I’m gonna keep going.”

By the time 5:30 am rolled around, Catra had passed out over a profile of basic character sketches. Drawing She-Ra was a cake walk compared to Hordak or Weaver. Some light stalking was involved in drawing everyone else; Catra had no idea what Glitter and Rainbow looked like so but she wanted to give it a shot. She’d come this far. That meant going through their instagrams, which were easy enough to find because Adora was easy to find. There may have been about thirty-ish minutes of mindlessly staring at Adora’s dumb, oddly always perfect selfies. Once she snapped out of it- swallowing all of Scorpia’s cold tea in one swig so the disgusting taste would shock her out her Adora triggered stupor- Bow and Glimmer’s instas became gateways to Mermista’s, Perfuma’s, Frosta’s, and Sea Hawk (man did that guy like setting shit on fire and  _ filming  _ it). Soon she had the whole gang.

“I’ll save my fursona for tomorrow.” Catra yawned and stretched, not giving a fuck about the fact that this was technically tomorrow. Then she blacked out over the drawings.

After laying down their terms and conditions at the bakery, Catra and Adora moved forward in a weird, intimate way. Adora suggested they could meet up before her shift to work through the novel, which she was on the fringe of completing. And when Catra suggested she could just come to the bakery, Adora got all weird about it.

“No!” she practically blew Catra’s ear drum out with that one. They were talking on the phone as Scorpia and Entrapta bet on a rerun of Wheel of Fortune in Catra’s background.  _ On the phone  _ like they were preteen girls gossiping. Catra would have flat out rejected Adora’s number on her screen, but damn if she didn’t like hearing Adora’s voice.

“What- why?”

“It’s hard to get peace and quiet there.” Adora didn’t miss a beat with her reply. “Plus, if we do it there,  _ everyone  _ will be looking at your drawings.”

Catra’s nostril flared. “Fuck you, you win.” Her ringing laughter made it all worth it.

To make this weird situation weirder, Adora chose this little spot off the edge of park that over looked a hill and because she worked nights, they were always there as the sun set. Of course Adora just had to look fucking gorgeous with the sunset behind her. The whole thing reeked of subtle romance- they were alone with a serene sunset- and had Catra questioning what the fuck kind of game Adora was playing in the long run. Catra just ran with it. This thing was gonna explode spectacularly anyway, so if Adora did anything so royally fucked up Catra could just push her down the hill. Or just fucking launch herself down it. Whatever works.

Recently, they’d started bringing dinner, switching off nights. The _only_ thing, the only barrier that kept their take-out sunset park bench outings from being full on dates was the fact that they worked through them. That dumb book was somehow the best and _worst_ thing that had happened to Catra- and she had had a pretty shitty life!

Catra’s phone buzzed in her back pocket, and just like that was thrown back full force into the present, Entrapta playing back their conversation on her recorder while Scorpia stood there nodding like she understood all of their roommates commentary. “Shit! What time is it?”

“I dunno, almost six o’clock?” Scorpia looked up from Entrapta’s recorder.

“Fuck!” she whipped out her phone to find several messages from a worried Adora and grabbed her shopping bag with her free hand. “Damn it, I’m late!”

_ adora 5:07 pm _

__ Are you still good for tonight?

_ adora 5:29 pm _

hello?

_ adora 5:34 pm _

__ Catra?

_ Aw, you worried Princess? _

Catra’s fingers flew and she sent her quick reply.

_ Catra’s cell 5:51 pm _

__ yeah i’m here. got caught upat my apartment

A smile broke on her face when she spotted the '… 'at the bottom of her screen within in half of second of her own reply.

“Hey Entrapta, wanna help me finish putting up my curtains tonight? You know, since you’re not working and all?”

_ adora 5:51 pm _

__ oh cool.

Are we still on for tonight? 

“That does sound like an interesting activity, Emily and I will assist you! Oh, and then can we watch more Wheel of Fortune?”

_ Catra’s cell 5:52 pm _

__ duh.why are you even asking? i’m the one driving doofus.

“Hey Catra, you wanna join us?” Scorpia asked. Catra’s eyes stayed glued to her screen. 

“Um, no sorry. Gotta work.” that wasn’t technically a lie.

_ adora 5:52 pm _

__ how does Chinese sound?

_ Catra’s cell 5:53 pm _

__ we had chinese two days ago princess.

there’s a thai place I took some guy today. Wanna try there?

“By work, are you referring to seeing Adora? You usually don’t show this much enjoyment when it comes to your job.” Entrapta’s words only caused Catra to look away from her phone for like two seconds, so Catra could squint her eyes at her implications.

‘Course Scorpia had to pile on. “Hmm, are you texting Adora? You don’t usually text people.”

“No.” Now that was a lie. A fucking whopper. God, it was like she a kid caught with her hand in a cookie jar.

_ adora 5:53 pm _

__ Sounds great! 

_ Catra 5:54 pm _

__ okay. leavign now

With that, Catra shoved her phone back her pocket and grabbed her jacket. “I’m going now. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“Have fun with Adora! Tell her we said hi!” shouted Scorpia as Catra made for the front door.

“Stop talking about Adora!” Catra yelled back.

Right as Catra opened the door, she heard Entrapta mumble “Should we hack her phone? That will tell us if she was truly texting Adora…”

“Do that and I’ll never speak to either of you again.”

She slammed the door with a satisfying bang as rustling sounded behind her and Scorpia screamed, “Entrapta! Entrapta  _ no- _ ”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, long and a lot of development, but I promise Catradora interaction in the next chapter, and some more Scorpia. God I love writing the Super Pal Trio.
> 
> Shout out to Johannas_Motivational_Insults for coming and beta-ing. fantastic author! Please check out their story [Demons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026990/chapters/42594701)
> 
> it's amazing! and a great exploration of the effects of abuse on both Catra and Adora!
> 
> Please tell me your thoughts for this chapter! SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SEASON 2 Y'ALL!!!!!!!!!!


	10. this god damn sunset is a specimen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And what was Adora if not a wake up call, a slap to the face and a dunking in ice water to shake her from the very attitude that was killing her? What was Adora if not a second chance for Catra to let herself hope?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! welcome back! i am officially done with the spring semester and i have some fun things planned for you all this summer! 
> 
> We're getting closer to the end and that is so wild for me to even think about. I could not have made it this far without any of you! So thank you for all your hits, kudos, comments, and encouraging messages on tumblr. Thank you for putting up with long waits between updates and then reading extremely long chapters!
> 
> So here we go! Adora is in this chapter, and it's pretty much them talking the whole time, with Scorpia coming in at the end. 
> 
> I will say that there is still discussion about trauma and child hood abuse. We're still talking about hordak and shadow weaver, so be ready for that. Also there is a flashback of childhood bullying that i should warn you about. 
> 
> also, this logic of this fic is only held together by the sheer force of my will, lmao
> 
> I hope you enjoy! thank you again [Johannas_Motivational_Insults](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026990/chapters/42594701) for beta-ing!

_ “Remember when you hit the brakes too soon, twenty stitches in the hospital room? When you started crying, baby I did too-” _

Taking her hand off the steering wheel, Catra made a big show out of turning down the volume on the dashboard. Yeah, that was more or less shitty of her, she’d definitely admit that since she was trying to be better and all. Plus it meant saying goodbye to the Adora who was doing a terrible job of humming under her breath along with the godawful song. _Oh Adora, you’re_ so _bad at being inconspicuous._ Catra would’ve been annoyed- any of her passengers making any sort of noise usually made her want to throw things- but Adora’s voice was borderline heavenly. Not that Catra would admit that _out loud_ to anyone ever. “Your taste in music is fucking terrible, Princess.”

“It is  _ not _ !” Adora protested, hugging the gigantic amount of Thai take-out she literally  _ stumbled _ with into the car twenty minutes ago- it was the heels, it was always those  _ fucking _ heels- her voice fluctuating up an octave in a that irritating way that still made Catra’s dumb heart skip a beat. Damn her voice. Her stupidly pretty, sexy, annoying voice that Catra never wanted to stop hearing. “And- and I thought you said you  _ wanted _ to listen to the playlists I made for She Ra and that it was so much better than listening to the ‘shit’ your other passengers played? Also, you didn’t have to let me, DJ Catra, so this is obviously on you.”

“Yeah, but it’s like forty percent Taylor Swift-”

“Ha! You know it’s Taylor Swift!” Adora snorted and if Catra’s foot wasn’t on the gas pedal she would’ve kicked her shin.

“Duh I know it’s Taylor Swift, she’s only on the radio every other four fucking songs! Can you just, ugh, please play  _ another _ song from the playlist? You’re gonna make me regret actually using Sea Hawk’s weird apology aux cord.” Curse Adora. Curse her stupid beautiful face and her equally annoying puppy dog eyes that totally worked on her and the song Catra was kind of getting into because Adora was right, it really was a song that fit She Ra. Of course,  _ of course _ , she had to look all bummed out when Catra mocked her playlist- which okay,  _ was _ pretty low, but hey, that was her flirting style!  _ Ugh, why is this so fucking hard? _

Walking out of her apartment, knowing now about her romantic feelings (ugh, gross) for Adora that she had been working her ass off day and night to compartmentalize, only to drive straight to Adora… God it was just so weird. Why wasn’t Catra still in her apartment freaking the fuck out about her feelings? Why was she driving said object of her feelings to have a not-date at Bright Moon’s most popular make out point? Why was she listening to Taylor Swift in her own car and almost  _ enjoying _ it?

The answer to all of her questions was sitting in her passenger seat, trying to navigate her phone around the mountain of food (God, all the food smelled so fucking delicious, so much so that her mouth was starting to water, ew. Wait? When was the last time Catra ate?) and scroll through her Spotify to pick another song. “Okay, I think- I think I got it. No more Taylor.” With that, the pop ballad changed to soft guitar riffs of a melody that just barely escaped Catra’s recognition.

“Ugh, thank God.”

“Whatever,” scoffed Adora, “I saw you drumming on the steering wheel, Catra, you  _ liked _ it.”

_ Only because you were singing- DON’T SAY THAT OUT LOUD CATRA GOD DAMNIT!  _ “Oh please, princess, I was not drumming, I don't drum, and you- you can’t even see behind all those fucking take out boxes!”

“No, you were dancing, I saw it-“ Catra acted on reflex, shoving Adora’s shoulder with a partially gloved hand, and was about to bask in her own smug pride when, “Shit, Catra- the food, the food, the food!” Even Adora’s Wonder Woman arms couldn’t catch all their take out boxes, and Catra had basically pushed them out of her arms anyway, so now they were was about to be a shit load of Thai food all over Marshmallow’s car.

“Fuck!” Catra slammed on the brakes- bad,  _ bad _ idea as Adora started shouting more- and threw her arm out. For once in their life, they caught a break, saving the food before it became a drag queen’s valid motivation for killing an uber driver ( _ now that’s the fucking story Adora should write _ ). The only damage was to Adora’s face; Catra’s arms saved the white boxes from spilling her doom but knocked them into her passenger’s nose and chin, and Catra had to swallow her laughter. What, it was like watching her get punched like three times in a row. Sixteen year old Catra would have  _ killed _ to see that. “You good?”

Adora mumbled something unintelligible so Catra took that as a sign to keep driving. “What? I can’t hear you Adora,” she snickered. Oh how she enjoyed turning her obnoxiousness up to the max around Adora. Teasing her was just  _ too  _ easy _. _

“I  _ said _ ,” Adora’s head popped out and she set her chin on the top take-out box. “Why do you brake so hard? I thought you were supposed to be a good driver.”

Rolling her eyes, Catra put her hands back on the wheel. “I’d shove you again but I don’t want Marshmallow to kill me over spilled Thai food stains.”

“Yeah, well if you keep braking like that Marshmallow  _ will _ have a reason to kill you and I won’t stop-“

“We’re here.” Oh Catra didn’t brake this time, but she did swing a hard left into the parking lot like a maniac, sending Adora and the food into the window, savoring every second of her head meeting glass and her muffled swearing. Probably would’ve been more funny if she wasn’t so cute (gross), her whole body thrown against the side, the pressed white pantsuit she was wearing crumpling up. Wait- was she not wearing her seatbelt?  _ Damn it, Adora! _ Then again, Catra would like to see Adora try and put a seat belt on with their dinner balanced in her lap.  _ That  _ would have been fucking hysterical.

By the time Adora managed to get herself back to a normal position, none of the food free of its designated containers- damn, she really was Wonder Woman- Catra had pulled into parking spot across from the hill with their usual wooden table. “I hate you,” Adora pouted. Catra bit back a grin. She was enjoying this. A lot. Catra took off her seatbelt and moved to help grab some off their feast, but of course Adora had to make a big unnecessary deal out of carrying it all by herself. Again. "I got it, I got it-" she protested right as the mountain tipped further into her.

“Then open the door, Adora.”

They’d had this argument before. Almost every night about who carried the food, who paid for the food, all that let’s-make- _ sure _ -it’s-not-actually-a-date shit they argued about, because Catra would rather impale herself than admit she needed help  _ carrying  _ something and Adora either didn’t want to burden Catra, or she wanted to show off (Catra was pretty damn sure it was the second one). So this was not Catra’s first rodeo with Adora’s stubborn chivalrousness and by now, she knew exactly what buttons to push to get Adora to see she was being a giant idiot and wasting precious time to eat. As if on cue, Catra’s stomach grumbled and out of the corner of her eye, she could see Adora frowning, her ocean eyes churning.  _ She’s worried. ‘Cause she cares about me... Lame. _

A few seconds of this standoff passed before, “Fine. Can you please come to my side and open my door?”

“And?” Catra leaned back in her seat and glanced at her nails.

“You’re the worst. And can you take… one fourth of the food?”

“Half princess,  _ half _ . That’s the deal, don’t try and negotiate ‘cause you’re about to get tom kha gai down your bra. Again.” That had been a fun night, minus the arguing about Catra running Adora back to her apartment which she was so stupidly stubborn about-  _ she _ was the one about to go into work where everyone hated her with soup running down her expensive blouse- and the consequent running Adora back to her apartment when Catra won the argument. There was a weird smile on her face as that memory came back to her while Catra opened her own door and walked over to Adora’s. Yanking the handle open, Catra wiped that dumb grin off her face so Adora wouldn’t get an ounce of satisfaction. Ugh, opening her door.  _ Now this really _ does  _ feel like a date _ . Her only other option was Adora’s chauffeur- but like hell was Catra about to go there.

“That looks about half, right?” asked Adora once she was standing and they’d split all the food. Jesus, there was a lot of it. Her voice was sincere enough for Catra’s grip on their drink carrier to relax. Adora wasn’t pulling anything over her or trying to be slick by making sure she was actually carrying one or two cartons more; no, she was actually eyeing both loads as if she was measuring it out in her head. Okay, good. She was being fair. No games.  _ Adora’s not playing games with you, you fucking moron- okay, but what if she is? _

Ignoring her doubts for the sake of her gnawing hunger, Catra just nodded and motioned for her to walk to the table. “Don’t forget your backpack.” she teased, sticking her tongue out.

“Ugh, are you ever going to let that go?” Adora rolled her eyes, shifting the strap hanging off her shoulder, and followed a cackling Catra’s lead. “Your jokes are about as bad as your driving.”

-

Having made this a daily venture, Catra and Adora fell into their little routine out of habit. They both dumped the food they’d each been carrying onto their designated shitty wooden picnic table, not really saying anything, choosing instead to let the silence do the talking. Adora busied herself dividing the food up between them and then setting up her Macbook covered in lesbian pride stickers, muttering to herself about the charge and smudges on her screen. Before getting out her sketchbook and supplies, Catra snickered as she violently shook out the bag dedicated to a shit ton of plastic silverware over the table, just so a few shrink wrapped forks would hit her fancy ass rich girl laptop. 

At least this way Catra could deny this was anything more than a work outing. But… people working on platonic projects didn’t do shit like this: eat in comfortable silence and then watch a salmon sunset ( _ Salmon, what the fuck Catra? Ugh, I’ve been spending  _ way  _ too much time with Adora _ ) before getting down to business. Catra hadn’t exactly ever been on a date before, no most of her “romantic” outings involved getting blackout drunk and fucking a stranger she just met, only to wake up in a pool of her own regret and somebody else’s vomit, so it’s not like she had a solid comparison for what they were probably like. But she knew they didn’t involve working on young adult novels filled with gay princesses and shit.  _ Whatever _ , Catra shoved those thoughts aside and instead threw all her focus on a styrofoam bowl of Wonton soup. Except it took her a million years to find what she wanted because there was tons of styrofoam bowls and just as many takeout containers. “Adora, why’d you get so much fucking food?”

“Because you didn’t tell me what you wanted, Catra!” she fired back immediately and Catra bit back a smile. Fierce Adora might be her favorite Adora… and a definite contender for the sexiest. “You just kicked me out of the car so you could go get gas and said ‘if you get me something decaf I’ll strangle you in your sleep, Princess.’”

Catra put her head in her hand and winked. “Sounds like as long as you got me something with caffeine you’ll be fine.”  

“What am I, an amateur? Of course I didn’t. Coke with lemon, just how you like it. Migraine-be-gone.” Adora said, sliding her drink to her across the table.

“You’re a fucking lifesaver.” Catra sighed before jamming her straw into the poor unsuspecting plastic. And Adora really was her lifesaver, in this case. It was barely even seven fucking thirty and Catra’s traitorous head was starting to pound, hell bent on keeping her from enjoying anything good that stumbled into her crappy life. Alcohol was one way to deal with the pain that flooded her body, but caffeine was a recommended alternative, specific just for her bitchy migraines.

Her new work partner wasn’t stupid. A couple days into working in the park, Adora started to pick up on the not so subtle signs Catra was in excruciating pain or just a few minutes from it. When Catra would push herself too hard, Adora would make them both stop. Now,  _ apparently _ , she had memorized her drink order. Yeah, it wasn’t some Bright Mooner’s vegan frappuccino level complicated, but the gesture had absolutely floored Catra.  _ No one _ , not even Scorpia or Entrapta, seemed to actually notice or care about when her brain was about to explode. Adora just had the drink order memorized, teased her for her inner white girl, and had yet to demand any sort of credit for the altruistic act.

_ Yeah, because she’s just using you for some weird mind game _ . Catra bit down on her tongue. Goddamnit, it was so much easier to say Adora was playing mind games with her than was to admit Adora might actually care because she was a kind and thoughtful person. The kind of person Catra  _ wanted  _ to be, wanted to be loved by. But watching her go to town on a some pad thai with a plastic spork like absolutely no in the world was watching her, Catra seriously doubted Adora was even capable of the sinister manipulation so natural to Hordak and Weaver.  _ Dork. _

“By the way, you owe me twenty dollars.”

Catra almost choked on her soda. “Jesus  _ Christ _ , you spent forty dollars on our dinner?”

“Hey, don't snap at me, I'm sorry! The lady kept offering me things, I don’t exactly know how to say no, okay Catra? Plus you didn’t tell me what you wanted to eat!” Adora started rambling off, “And then there were people behind and they just kept coming, and then the guy ringing me asked me if this was for a, um-” Adora stopped herself almost as quickly as she’d started, rubbing her neck. “Anyways, it doesn’t matter! Light Spinners paid yesterday and Glimmer's supposed to pay me tomorrow, and besides, whatever we don’t eat we can just split and take home to share.”

Okay, feeding her roommates wasn’t… a shitty idea. Catra should probably have been doing it more often; it weighed on her enough that Scorpia was already covering most of their rent. Sighing, Catra reached back in her pocket and pulled out her wallet. “Ugh, fine.”

“I mean, you can keep that money if you want, ‘cause I’m gonna find a meme you don’t know, and you’re gonna have to let me pay for gas.”

“Fuck off, Adora.”  _ Don’t you dare fucking smile, don’t you dare. God why does she have to look so damn beautiful all the time?!  _ “You’ve been trying to win that dumb bet for three days, just admit that  _ I  _ won.”

“You don’t win until I sifted through every meme in the entire universe!” Adora waved her spork- she  _ sucked  _ at using chopsticks and was surprisingly honest about it- in Catra’s direction.

Rolling her eyes, Catra gave up on finding the soup and just fished around for another thing of Pad Thai, “Or forfeit, which I highly recommend, ‘cause you keep embarrassing yourself. Not that I don’t love watching you grovel, Princess.”

“I don’t  _ grovel _ Catra, I win. And I’m gonna find something, so maybe  _ you _ should forfeit and just let me pay you now.” With that dumb declaration, Adora threw her legs up on the bench with a double  _ wump _ , turning her attention to her shoes.

“You’re so weird.” Her words sounded like some dreamy sigh. Thank the fucking lord Adora couldn’t hear her. Or was just ignoring her  _ (please let it be the first one!)  _ Shoving in as many noodles as she could in the next four seconds in a desperate and useless attempt to drown that annoying romantic side of her that Adora brought out, Catra then asked, “You gone to Bow for help yet?”

“No, ‘cause you said that was cheating, remember?” she replied, pulling off one of her heels and tossing it over her shoulder. “I did go through his tumblr  _ and _ his Instagram and then he wanted to know why I was liking stuff from four months ago…” Catra raised an eyebrow as Adora threw her other white heel away like she was some lesbian Cinderella. “I panicked and said I was making a scrapbook for the three of us, which now I have to do, so I hope you’re happy.”

This dumb comment made Catra laugh so hard a fucking noodle almost went up her nose.  _ MOTHERFUCK!  _ Grabbing her drink and shoving her straw in her mouth before Adora could catch on and be all worried about her again, she squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to choke or, worse, spit take out all over the other woman.  _ This is so fucking unfair. First, this isn’t a date, second she’s gorgeous and smart and now she’s FUNNY?  _ Catra let her nails dig into the styrofoam of her cup before taking a deep breath. Adora hadn’t noticed that she practically almost killed Catra with her teasing, she was too busy flexing her feet and wiggling her little toes.  _ Wow thanks for the heimlich Adora, wait what the- _ Catra’s eyes widened. Were her feet just straight up bleeding? Her toes and heels, both covered in bandages (with horses on them, of course), were an unnaturally bright red, swollen and throbbing like two pink fleshy balloons about to pop. “What the  _ hell  _ is wrong with your feet, Adora? Are you like pregnant or something?”

Adora wiggled her toes again, her eyebrows creasing.  _ Um, what does that mean?  _ “No, I’m not _ pregnant, _ Catra.”

“Then-”

“But I am two weeks late…”  _ What?  _ Adora bit her lip and cupped her breasts, “And like, my boobs really hurt and also I’ve been craving pickles and peanut butter, oh God… maybe you should take me to the drug store, Catra.”

_ What the FUCK? _

All Catra could do was stare at her.  _ She’s bluffing, she has to be fucking bluffing.  _ Unless she was suddenly into sleeping with men despite all her cheesy lesbian merch there was absolutely no way- so  _ why _ was she looking at Catra like she was about to a have a full on panic attack?! Adora’s mouth began to quiver-  _ holy SHIT, is she gonna cry? Are we about to have like a real crisis here? Jesus fuck! - _ but then the corners of her mouth turned into a smile and she burst out into hysterical laughter. “Oh my  _ God,  _ did you think I was actually pregnant? I did  _ not  _ think you were gonna buy that! You should’ve seen your face! Priceless!”

“Jesus, Adora!” squeaked Catra, throwing a fistful of noodles her way. “That was  _ not  _ funny!”

“Then why are you smiling?” she fired back with a wild smile on her face, dodging the food with ease. Catra couldn’t roll her eyes far back enough in her head. She sure as hell didn’t want to laugh- she wanted to be fucking  _ pissed _ \- but what Adora had just pulled was exactly the kind of shit Catra was always pulling on everyone else. Mostly with her, but still! Adora’s laughter died down after the longest five minutes in the history of the god damn universe and Catra forced a frown on her face. “Why does everyone think I pregnant anyway?”

“Um, maybe it’s ‘cause your feet look like they’re about to explode?”  _ Uh, who the hell else thinks she’s pregnant? _

Adora looked over at her practically bleeding stumps and grumbled. “It’s the  _ shoes!  _ They don’t fit right and I broke my other pair-”

“Oh yeah, when you indented my car that night you were completely hammered?”

“Whatever,” she waved Catra off, “but these ones squeeze my toes and make me blister no matter  _ how _ many times I wear them but Angella bought them so I can’t exactly return them or anything! And they won’t let me wear flats! What is wrong with those dumb sexist bastards!?” whined Adora, throwing her head in her hands.

“Awe, princess work sounds  _ exhausting. _ ” Catra couldn’t help but tease her- she just couldn't resist when it came to Adora, if the last three weeks had proven anything. Also, she had just let her think she was pregnant for a whole goddamn minute and probably would’ve kept her little charade up if she could have held it together longer, so she had this coming. Except, there was another part of that was  _ pissed  _ on Adora’s behalf. All their drives together and all their little park outings revealed to Catra just how often they treated Adora like complete shit, like she was some cross between their secretary and slave. No wonder she was so motivated to get published and get the hell out of there; her coworkers made comments about her ass  _ to her face,  _ her boss hated her because she complained about the harassment  _ once _ , and HR was just a bunch of brainless idiots basically getting paid to jack off all day. _ This,  _ this why Catra fucking hated this city.  _ Adora  _ wasn’t even good enough for this shiny city of shitty lies, so where did that leave the rest of them? And the total lack of cherry on this sundae: the dumb company forced Adora to follow their stupid dress code? She worked  _ nights  _ so the company could bar her from anything important so whose expectations was she actually fulfilling? They only made her dress like that cause HR blacklisted all their precious porn websites on the company computers. That meathead boss of hers threatened to write her up more than once for being barefoot and one time for wearing pants instead of a skirt; Adora almost pulled her hair out recounting that and Catra seriously considered calling Entrapta to ask if she wanted to come down and help her commit arson, so she stuffed her poor feet into those terrible shoes and wore them until she bled. She was so much better than any of those dildos deserved.

“Chad asked if I was pregnant the other day,” Adora said with a drawn out sigh, stretching her arms out and grasping her foot like it was nothing. Looking back down at her food, Catra tried not to think about how damn flexible Adora was.  _ Is she actually flexing on me? Is that what is happening right now?  _ “Dumbass. He was all ‘Adora, your tits look bigger, are you pregnant or something?’ I wanna beat his fuckboy face in  _ so  _ bad.”

_ Yeah, and I wanna watch you do it. Film it too.  _ “You Bright Mooners are so freaking lame. Why stop at his face? Fucking castrate him.”

“I want out of there, Catra, like yesterday. I don’t how much longer I can hide in the ladies bathroom reviewing budget reports and watching reruns of The Office on my laptop.” Uh oh. She had  _ that  _ look on her face. Like the weight of the whole world was crushing her, about to break her in half, and Catra was about watch helplessly, on the sidelines, as it happened  _ again _ .

_ No, hell no! Not doing the crying tonight, my head already hurts too damn much. _

“Then get over here so we can finish this book and get you out of there.” Catra smirked. Adora's face lit up and she was up in a instant, stepping with her bleeding feet over rocks and sticks before sliding to her side of the bench.

Laughing just a little, Adora swung her laptop around and began talking fast about the latest chapter. Little details she added and something about Frosta's characterization. Adora was always at her happiest when she was talking about She Ra, shining like the freaking sun, and that was the biggest reason Catra subjected herself to listening about princesses, ugh. Too bad Catra was too busy drowning in her dumb thoughts.  _ At least she’s happy again- wow, she is close.  _ Their thighs were pretty much touching, elbows bumping, hands brushing.  _ Oh God... _ Catra tried to downplay the shiver that ran through her body. Was it possible to get high off the scent of someone’s lotion? For fuck's sake, she was so touch starved she was practically emaciated. Forget forty dollars worth of Thai food, having Adora so close,  _ that  _ was the feast. But the joke was on Catra, since she was too weak and pathetic to make the first move.  

Adora giggling under her breath snapped Catra out of her brain’s current meltdown.

“What? What is it?”

“You just- you’ve got a little-” Adora stuttered, gesturing to her own chin.  _ Fuck! _

Catra’s hands flew to her chin, embarrassment coursing through her. She had food  _ on  _ her?  _ Shit!  _ Damn it, this is what she gets for eating in front of someone. “Did I- did I get it?”

“No,” Adora bit back a smile, “you missed by like a mile. Here, let me-” Before Catra could stop her, or even think about what Adora was about to do, Adora thumb’s brushed the side of her mouth. The gentle, almost intimate touch was enough to send a surge of electricity through Catra, suspending her ability to breathe. Adora’s touch lingered, a storm brewing in those ocean eyes of hers.  _ Fuck,  _ she was beautiful. And so,  _ so _ close. When was the last time Catra let someone touch her like this? When was the last time Catra let someone touch her at all if they weren’t her? Catra didn’t know just how badly she wanted Adora’s hands on her until it was happening and now she never wanted it to stop happening.

Inches away was all they were, yet it felt like light years. This close, Catra could practically count the frizzy strands of blonde hair escaping from her ponytail and framing her face. Her cheeks were a blazing pink that matched the color of the sky behind her. Huh, so this was just as awkwardly intimate for her as it was for Catra, good. Right?

The longer the moment weighed on them, the longer Adora kept her hand on Catra’s cheek, the more Catra knew she couldn’t take the distance. For fuck’s sake, her lips were  _ right  _ there.  _ You know you want to,  _ a voice whispered,  _ you’ve wanted to for like three freaking weeks.  _ But there was a reason Catra hadn’t kissed Adora in the past three weeks. Was it impulsive?  _ Doi _ ! But that was far from her main reason why. If they jumped on this moment, acted on this electric impulse, there would be no working on the book for the rest of the night and Adora needed out of that shitty job, Catra needed that paycheck. And they’d made so much progress in the last month and Catra couldn’t afford to lose that… couldn’t afford to lose  _ her.  _ Would Catra taking the leap and actually kissing her break them? Would it break her?

_ Curiosity killed the cat…  _ Hordak’s sinister words rang in her head, and that was all it took. She couldn’t do this, no matter how bad she wanted to. No matter how badly Adora wanted to. Catra would fuck them both over if she went through with this. So she moved away from Adora’s touch, almost tearing up at the loss of contact.  _ Wow. What the  _ hell  _ is wrong with me?  _ But she didn’t think about that, couldn’t think about it, or bring herself to glance up the crushed look on Adora’s face.  _ Nice job, Catra.  _ Why didn’t she just deck Adora in the jaw next time?

“Uh, so I was um thinking, I- I drew up some more scenes for chapter nine,” coughed Catra, concentrating enough to pop a vein in her aching head to keep the disappointment from leaking into her voice. “And I- I also came up with a basic design for Hordak, finally.” She whispered that last word under her breath.

Adora straightened up. “Oh, okay. Hit me.” She returned Catra’s gaze with a weak smile.

Throwing open her sketchbook, the old one, not the fancy ass expensive one she’d just splurged on, Catra pulled out her latest drawings. The first Catra had thrown almost every emotion possible to experience at the drawing while she listened to an old Blink-182 CD on repeat at the three in the morning. Pictured on the page was of her and Adora, nine years old, hand in hand and running away from one of Catra’s bullies- Octavia, that was her name- only they weren’t sprinting down Ginger Avenue like in Catra’s memories. In this “memory” they were sprinting down the hall of their Horde dormitory. Catra hadn’t colored them in their tattered and dirty second hand clothes, but in the red, white, and gray of soldiers’ uniforms. Somehow, it didn’t look or feel so different from what had been reality.

Catra held her breath as her eyes searched Adora for a reaction. That golden, sculpted face of hers remained unmoved for the longest eternity in Catra’s whole freaking life as she took in the drawing.  _ Say something… please.  _ Hugging herself with slightly shaking hands, Catra turned her own gaze away. This was always the worst part, when Adora looked over her work. Basically, it was quid pro quo ‘cause Catra fell asleep every night watching her make changes ranging from small edits to massive paragraphs in the She Ra doc and Adora knew she was there lurking  _ Fuck, that’s not making it harder for her is it? _

It’s not like Adora ever disapproved of whatever she drew but still, Catra preferred almost choking again to having this go on another damn minute.

“This is amazing, Catra.” When Adora did speak-  _ fucking finally- _ her words of praise were quiet, yet in the same way, loud enough to shatter glass.  

“S’nothing.” Brushing her off was a habit. So was obsessing over her commentary when she drove home alone at night when this was all over. Adora meant it right? Adora wasn’t tricking her, right? Of course she fucking wasn’t, Adora was the exact of opposite of Hordak and she wasn’t Mrs. Weaver… right?

“Um, you colored it again.”

“Oh fuck! Shit, I forgot,” winced Catra.  _ Fucking dumbass.  _ The drawings had to be in black and white ‘cause they couldn’t exactly print color. That was basically asking the publishing company to stomp on their dreams. “Guess I got caught up in the whole thing. Again.” Losing herself in the process and in the story was happening more and more often. Scorpia was right; this shit was therapeutic. Adora really was onto something here.

The gentle smile ( _ why is she so fucking pretty? Who gave her the right?) _ on her face showed Catra that Adora understood. Completely. “It’s okay. Sometimes I forget I’m writing a  _ young adult  _ novel, and my scenes can get… graphic.”

_ And I didn’t get to read them? Fucking hell!  _ “Dude it’s cool. I’ll redo it tonight.”

Okay, yeah. This was weird. Catra never expected her art to mean anything to anyone,  _ ever _ , and now she was sitting at a park partnered up with some wannabe author who  _ loved  _ her work, so much so she wanted it front and center in her debut novel. Catra asked her to be upfront at the beginning of their collaboration, demanded Adora throw out the pitiful sugar coating and be honest, tell her when she could do better, and yeah she sometimes did, but her suggestions were always practical when it came to matters of publication. If Adora liked her art… if it got out there in the real world and other people liked it too… what excuse would she have then to drop this whole tattoo artist plan? Hordak’s grating, annoying voice ringing in her head?

_ Guess that’s all that would be left… ‘cause he never leaves me alone, god damnit! _

“Adora?” The other woman hadn’t said anything in while, and with Adora, that was a  _ bad sign _ . Catra just had this inner monologue/mini freak out about her worst, most pathetic insecurities and Adora hadn’t made any comment about her redoing the drawing, or her zoning out.  _ Oh fuck.  _ Those ocean eyes of hers hadn’t left the drawing for a while and now- now there was a look on her face that scared the absolute shit out of Catra. Adora was fading right in front of her, about to be lost in and subjected to some brutal memory for God knew how long. “Hey, Adora?”  _ I can’t do this again, I can’t watch this fucking happen to her, why did I let this happen?  _ Damn, it felt like panic straight up kicked her in the stomach and then punched her in the throat. Her heartbeat rang in her ears as she held her breath before knocking Adora’s knee with her own.

“Huh?” jolted Adora, blinking a few times. “Oh sorry, zoned out for second.”

“Um, don’t worry about it?” Wow. Catra thought  _ she _ was in denial about her post traumatic stress. Drowning her pain by getting to the bottom of the bottle was maladaptive as shit, Catra always thought, until she realized Adora was just bottling everything up, hellbent on keeping locked away until it leaked out of her. Or, until she came up with some wild scheme to get Catra to take off her jacket and because that dumb blonde was smarter than she gave her credit for, Catra fell for it. Because Catra let herself forget why she wore the jacket in the first place. Let herself forget that she had that  _ thing,  _ that reminder of all the hurt and all the fucking anguish, a blemish of her true colors on her back just so she could act normal,  _ be  _ normal in front of Adora’s posh friends. But Catra wasn’t normal. Weaver and Hordak had seen to that. See, Catra wasn’t normal, she was just broken, that horrid scar telling a sob story she couldn’t even fucking remember. One look, one tiny slip up of her tank top, and the walls of Adora’s dam came tumbling down.

Because Adora remembered, even if she tried so damn hard into tricking herself that she didn’t.

For the past thirteen years Catra dreamed, plotted,  _ yearned  _ for some possible way to make Adora feel all her pain. Screamed at her in her imagination and dreams until Adora cried and fell on her knees before Catra to beg for forgiveness. Catra compartmentalized by pretending Adora never cared for or loved her or noticed the hurt Weaver was inflicting that should have been so fucking obvious. Then she had to come and stumble back into Catra’s life, proving herself to be a good friend and an even better person, destroying every ounce of stability that Catra’s anger provided her until there was nothing left. And when Catra watched Adora lose herself to that numbness, to that memory that was their hellish childhood, it didn’t heal her like she thought it would. The exact fucking opposite actually. Watching Adora crumble under her own pain had made Catra physically sick. That- Adora’s friends begging she come back to them and their reality only to have her run out crying- was  _ not  _ what Catra wanted. She no longer wanted to scream at Adora while she groveled and begged for a forgiveness she’d never receive. Adora’s apology didn’t cure the festering wound left by Weaver or Hordak, didn’t eliminate the aching emptiness eating her alive day by day like she spent the last decade hoping it would. No, it didn’t do shit, only made her feel like shit, unlike… unlike Adora. Everything about that night had been perfect until Catra fucked it all up by triggering her. When was the last time Catra goofed around with anyone or talked to Bright Moon hipsters? She’d only done it for Adora, because god damn it, Adora made her feel like a person and  _ nothing  _ else did!

Adora throwing her arms around her that night after they did scream and cry and take all those ugly, messy vulnerable steps toward healing or whatever this was, that was the cure. That was the feeling Catra had been chasing her whole life to get back to.  

To be whole. To be human once more. To be home.

Catra looked down at her drawing.   _ How were we so happy? Life fucking sucked. We were dirt poor and bullied all the time. They stole my sneakers that one time... But I guess we did have each other.  _ Wasn’t that the whole point of the chapter Adora was writing? So the fictional versions of themselves could look back and see, or in this case literally experience, what love had looked like to them? What they had meant to each other? Little Adora had insisted they share her only pair of shoes when Catra’s got stolen.  _ Wish I could tell little dumb me where we are now. That we’re driving for Uber and it actually doesn’t suck cause we’re back with her? We have a home and sort of a family? And better hair. Much better hair. _

“Hey can I ask you a question?” Catra’s voice broke the silence and Adora, who’d be poking some edamame, looked up at her with wide, frightened Bambi eyes. “A She Ra question, that is,” she added, her words hurried and sloppy as hell. Right. Might not want to phrase a sentence like that with someone like Adora.

Her shoulders and grip on her spork relaxed. “Of course. Whaddya wanna know?” Back was the giddy Adora and now it was Catra who could breathe easy.

“Why do I have a mane?” groaned Catra, gesturing wildly at her fictional persona with her broke nail, and immediately Adora burst out laughing. “Seriously, I get the ears and the tail, which I’m still not over by the way, but a fucking mane? You took it  _ way  _ too far this time, princess.”

“Catra, you’re part cat in the book. That’s your whole species. Magi- _ cats. _ I don’t- how many times am I gonna have to explain this?” laughed Adora, her nose scrunching up in the way that made Catra’s stomach do a fucking somersault.

Shaking her head, Catra turned back to her food. She was just about to shove another mouthful of noodles when Adora started again, “And it is sort of how I remember you.”

“Huh?” Catra’s eyebrows flew up, chopsticks half way in her mouth.

“I mean, you know,” Adora rubbed her neck, “when we were kids. Your hair was wreck, Catra, even you have to admit that.”

“Yeah ‘cause no one knew what the fuck they were doing when it came to my hair.” Mrs. Weaver didn’t understand that her hair was different, it wasn’t straight ( _ ha!)  _ so it wouldn’t respond and Catra still believed to this day it was one of the reasons she hated her. Just because she could barely run a comb through Catra’s tangles. But she tried, oh that  _ bitch  _ really tried it. Fucking sociopath probably only kept trying ‘cause she knew it really hurt Catra, making her sit still while she yanked the brush through  _ over and over  _ while Catra tried not to cry.

Adora rested her arms on the table. “Well it looks amazing now. Can  _ I  _ ask how that happened? It’s okay if you don’t- um, yeah it just, it looks great.”

_ Wow, she is  _ just  _ as bad at this as I am.  _ “If I tell you it was magic are you gonna faint?”

“No,” she rolled her eyes, “but I  _ might  _ start calling you princess, since you have magic and all that now. See how you like it.”

“Ugh, you’re”  _ so damn cute,  _ “insufferable, Adora. Fine. Hordak… Hordak had a mistress when I was fifteen. Actually he had like nine, but whatever. Anyways, her name was Casey- god I had such a major crush on her-” Catra put her head in her hands, full on blushing at the memory as Adora snorted, “but she had curly hair, like  _ long  _ perfect curls. One night she was over and I dunno, I guess I was in the kitchen and she saw me and my dumb hair. She got  _ pissed  _ at Hordak which is probably why I liked her so much. But to get her shut up and stop yelling at him ‘cause bitches be crazy or whatever, Hordak told Casey he could take me to a salon ‘cause it wasn’t cut right, blah blah blah. Hordak cut her off like three months later, but she would still send me products until I ran aw- until I moved out. And the rest is history, princess.”

“Seeing you for first time in thirteen years and you had these amazing curls was super jarring. I mean, they’re- they’re really pretty.” Adora shut herself up by taking a long sip of her drink, before brushing her own hair out of her face and adding, “To be honest, I’m like  _ super  _ jealous of your hair.”

“Why?” scoffed Catra.

“Cause mine is so  _ boring  _ Catra! It literally looks like straw, okay?” Adora sighed, turning up the pouting up to like eleven.  _ Fuck you Adora, I like your hair. You don’t try to force it to be anything it’s not, ‘cause that’s not you who are.   _

Except instead of saying that actual nice comment that would show just how vulnerable Catra was around her, she opted for the teasing one. ‘Cause it was safer. “Is that why She Ra has amazing princess hair?”

“Yep.” Adora popped her lips. “Guess I was pretty see through with that one.”

“Oh Adora, the whole novel is see through.” Whoops. Catra didn’t mean that to be so nasty and felt the punch of regret the second the words were out her mouth and Adora’s cheeks blazed a bright red. It was instinctual, she swore it, it was just a reflex… it was just a reflex.  _ Fuck!  _ If Adora really did having feelings for her or whatever word you could say that didn’t sound stupidly youthful or gross, then it wasn’t going to last long with Catra acting like this. Wow, was this car going to crash spectacularly. “The mane is fine Adora, it doesn’t actually bother me.”

Tucking the fallen strand of hair behind her ear, Adora mumbled, “Good to know. I don’t think it would make much sense to change it now, so...”  

“Yeah, it wouldn’t.” Catra licked her teeth, hugging her arms close. _ Fix this you idiot! It’s not that hard!  _ “Thanks, by the way, for what you said about my hair. I mean I don’t usually do things for other people because their seal of approval means jackshit to me… but thanks.”

“I meant it Catra. I am jealous.” The corners of her mouth perked up in a small smile and Catra shivered. As Adora’s attention went back to Catra’s sketchbook, Catra put her own chin in her hand, clawing at her skin with broken nails. If she looked over at Adora, she could see that white shimmering blouse of hers the dipped at her chest.

“Whatever, Adora. Wanna talk about jealousy? Your tits are fucking amazing.”

“Huh?” she looked up, “did you say something?”

“Pfft, no,” scoffed Catra. “You should get your hearing checked out, Princess, that might really be a problem.”  _ Oh my god, thank the fucking lord she didn’t actually hear me! _

“Um, okay. You- you said you drew up something basic for Hordak, right?” Adora’s expression morphed from confusion to curiosity as she pointed to the sketchbook.

Oh. Oh! “Uh, yeah. Next page.” Catra brought her styrofoam bowl closer as Adora flipped through the book.  _ Well, well, well, this is a turn of events,  _ Catra could practically  _ hear  _ Scorpia in her head,  _ you never ever let anyone touch your sketchbook. _

“Wow. This is  _ exactly  _ how I pictured him.” Adora’s words shut up imaginary Scorpia much faster than Catra could.

“You mean the weird robot man you describe  _ several  _ times cause you haven’t picked the freaking paragraph you want in the final draft?” winked Catra. There. That was a hell of a lot better than  _ really _ talking about her foster father.

“I’ll get there!” Adora stuck her tongue out, “I just can’t decide if I want a more cryptic description or to just be upfront about his appearance. Having an illustration does help, actually.”

“Eh, you’ll probably figure it out. And all three paragraphs are good, Adora, you could really go with any of them.”

That earned Catra an annoyed sigh. “That doesn’t help me narrow it down, Catra.”

“Fine,” Catra pulled the sketchbook away from Adora and towards her own side of the table, “personally I like the second one you wrote best. It’s not as detail heavy as the first and it’s easier to follow than the third, so if you pair it with my illustration the reader should, unless they're a complete and total idiot, be able to picture him in their heads or whatever.”

As Adora’s mouth fell open, Catra swallowed an uncomfortable wave of pride. They were partners. right? And this is what partners did so… it wasn’t a big deal.  _ Don’t you dare make it one, Adora.  _ “Wow, I didn’t know you had read my draft  _ that _ much, I’m kind of… I’m impressed.”

_ There’s a lot you don’t know Princess,  _ Catra thought to herself, her eyes falling to Hordak’s design. “Yeah, well, figured I should return the favor.”

“I know- I know this probably isn’t easy for you, Catra, drawing Hordak and Shadow Weaver, and I just- I’m grateful, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I really wouldn’t be able to do this without you.” Adora nudged her and Catra smiled despite herself.  _ Okay, maybe she knows more than I thought she did. Surprise, surprise. _

There were about a million and a half freaking ways to respond to her near vomit-inducing sentiment,  _ Adora you can do literally anything, you’re right this isn’t easy it fucking sucks I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you and I can barely do it for you at all, I think I’m falling for you so  _ why _ do you have to say things like that,  _ but Catra kicked those thoughts to the curb. Instead of carrying the moment, she half assed a vulnerability by dodging Adora's compliment with a question. “Okay, I have another question.” Okay that was just a proclamation, but who fucking cared it did the trick.

“Shoot.”

“Why Hordak?” Her words came out hushed and hurried _. That  _ was embarrassing. Oh, she couldn’t even be honest about how her foster father still scared the living shit out of her or how she could barely bring it up in conversation and now here she was, trying to be open about yet she sounded like some scared child? Great. Just great. This was only the question that had been eating at her, triggering nightmares and meltdowns, since Catra opened that damn notebook. Adora stopped mid twirl of her noodles and her eyebrows flew up.

“Scuse me?” She sounded confused.  _ Pfft. Typical Adora. _

“Why,” Catra forced herself to take a deep breath, “why is he even in She Ra? It’s not like you knew him that well… did you?”

The spork fell from Adora’s grip as she dropped it, her face twisting, lips clamped together like she was holding her breath or just trying to make herself pass out. “I did  _ meet  _ him… once.”

“Wait, really? Holy fuck,  _ when?”  _ How was that even possible? She and Adora were literally together 24/7 since the moment Catra showed up at that hell hole, and Catra couldn’t remember meeting that crusty old man until she was  _ at least _ twelve years old.

“I- Do you remember how when I got sick, Shad- I mean,  _ Mrs _ . Weaver would make me stay home?”

“Yeah, ‘cause I was always sick  _ too  _ and that bitch made me go to school anyways.”

“Yeah that was really shitty of her.” Adora picked up her spork. “Anyways, one day she thought I had a fever so I got to stay home and while everyone else was at school, he came to the house and talked to her.”

Catra didn’t know why this surprised her. Weaver was part of his network; clearly they communicated somehow. Guess just when none of them were around. “Holy shit.”

“It was so obvious they didn’t like each other. You know, Mrs. Weaver always talked about him like he was some great man or her savior or whatever, but she couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with him. Anyways, when he was there he kept going on and on about some debt she owed to him that she couldn’t pay and so she threw a plate at him, and that like, blew my mind. I was just surprised he didn't kill her on the spot. Hordak was terrifying, Catra, I don’t know how you lived with him for  _ years _ .”

“No shit Sherlock,” mumbled Catra. “So what, he scared you when you were a little kid and that just what, made some sort of impression?”

Adora shook her head. “That’s not- it's not why he’s in  _ She Ra  _ if you’re asking, that was just something that happened… did you ever wonder why  _ I _ ended up in Mrs. Weaver’s care?” She raised an eyebrow, her expression weirdly neutral.

“Um, not really,” Catra shrugged, before it hit her like Scorpia with the dictionary that one time at MegaMart. “Jesus  _ fuck _ \- you’re not saying that he-”

“I don’t know. All I do know is that he… he messed with my birth parents and was probably involved in their deaths. Pretty much just handed me to Weaver after that,” laughed Adora, like she really believed some little joke was going to take away the weight of this incredibly fucked up situation.

_ THEIR DEATHS?!  _ Catra’s death grip on the bench broke another nail and a tiny squeak.  _ So I just lived with a straight up murderer for years and absolutely no one gave a shit? _ What the hell could she even be talking about? Oh, Hordak was no law abiding saint and he’d probably put out hits on nameless nobodies who dared to defy his pseudo regime, duh, but the implication that he indirectly- or  _ directly- _ murdered Adora’s birth mother and father- that was fucking  _ messed up _ and straight out of some CSI episode. Catra had never really thought about Adora having a family when they were in the system together because she was some wide eyed child who so desperately and pathetically wanted to believe  _ she  _ was Adora’s family- Adora never  _ mentioned _ a birth mother or father. Probably why she was so blindsided and betrayed when Mara showed straight up out of fucking nowhere.

_ Wait, did  _ Mara _ know her mom and dad? Duh, that’s probably how she traced her to Weaver’s in the first place. Okay, so how in the hell did Adora go from having a normal family that wanted her to having no identity in a beat down orphanage in the middle of the freaking desert? _

Adora knew. Catra could see it in her eyes. Adora knew all those juicy details about her dark past-  _ okay but how did she know?-  _ and Catra, more than ever, was dying to just let Adora talk and talk and talk…

But in a strange and  _ very _ messed up turn of events, Adora wasn’t talking for once. Actually, she was blinking tears out of her eyes and trying to hide her anxious expression from Catra.  _ Nice fucking job, Catra. You made her cry. Again! _ Right as she noticed Catra staring, Adora pressed her wrists to her eyes and forced a smile on her face. Watching the whole thing was like another kick to the stomach. “Sorry, I know you have that thing about no crying.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Catra deadpanned. “Seriously, Adora.  _ Don’t  _ apologize.” ‘Cause it wasn’t like Catra had kept her own secrets locked in a vault about her mom the whole damn time they were growing up and then had a major scream/sob fest when they finally did talk about it a couple weeks ago in the car. If Adora didn’t want to talk about how Hordak fucked her family over, then Catra wasn’t going to make her. She sure as hell retained the right to keep those excruciatingly painful secrets.

_ Because apparently curiosity killed more than the cat... _

“Okay?” Adora smiled just a little bit but the look in her eyes was still pretty apprehensive.

“You apologize too much and over really dumb stuff too, Princess.”

Rolling those dazzling blue eyes of hers, Adora replied, “Whatever you say Catra. So, since you asked me a question, can I ask you one? You know, for She Ra?”

“Ugh, does this mean we’re playing that dumb twenty questions game again?” Catra was trying to sound annoyed, she wasn’t even half assing this attempt, but it didn’t come across because her angsty, pissed off and guarded facade was crumbling under the weight of everything amazing and radiating that was Adora.

“She Ra edition,” she winked.

“Ugh, total dork. Whatever, do your worst.”

“Okay,” she started, taking a deep breath, “for the sake, of you know, maintaining Hordak’s characterization, do you think… do you think you could tell me what he was like? All I really have is a couple of files and it-it works for now but he’s an integral part of the story later and I’d be okay with making his personality up but-”

“I can tell you.” Catra cut Adora’s ramblings off before she could spiral any further.

“Really?” she perked up like some little kid.

“Yeah, why not?” She had known this was coming. Yeah, it’s not like Catra wanted to talk about her abusive foster “father” or any of the shit he put her through, but that doctor Scorpia dug out of nowhere had straight up told her that if she didn’t find a  _ healthy  _ way to cope with her baggage, then it was going to get her fucking killed.  _ You know, like Hordak almost did.  _ Catra figured if anybody could come even a little bit close to understanding how fucked up the situation was, it would be Adora. Maybe Scorpia,  _ maybe _ , but most likely she’d just sob and squawk the whole time about what a horrible, tragic childhood she had, and then squeeze Catra until her ribs broke.    

At least if Adora tried to break any of her bones, Catra could probably take her. Her gaze fell to Adora’s bicep struggling against the fabric of her sleeve.  _ Probably _ .

“Well, you definitely hit the abusive nail on the abusive head in She Ra. Ugly bastard played me for five years and I always fell for it.” Catra’s voice fell and she found herself hugging her arms out of instinct.

“Why?”

“‘Cause I wanted a dad, duh!” squeaked Catra. Wow, she did not expect to fall apart this fast. “After you left, Weaver made my life hell ‘cause she knew they were gonna throw her behind bars anyway, might as well as a few years to her sentence for locking me in closets. It went on like that for  _ months, _ ”  _ why does my stupid voice keep breaking? I look sound like a pathetic moron! Ugh, don’t give me that look Adora, _ “and then Hordak showed up at the house one day and told Weaver it was over for her.”

Catra’s memory may have been selective as hell, but that- hearing her screeching tantrum as Hordak told her he was stripping her of her lawyer and would no longer be helping her with anything- that she  _ did  _ remember.

_ “You can’t take this from me!” Weaver screamed, begged, cried. Catra watched through the crack under the door. “I’ll have nothing without you! They’ll- they’ll convict me, I’m sure of it! You’re leaving me to rot!” _

Rot. That word echoed in Catra’s memory.

_ “Get up off the floor, insolent woman.” _

“She’d thrown me in the pantry earlier, that fucking bitch,” Catra continued with a shudder, “but I guess Hordak was walking through the house or something, cause he unlocked the pantry door. And then I kinda- well I  _ did _ attack him ‘cause I thought it was gonna be Weaver behind the door. I  _ bit  _ his arm, Adora.”

“Now  _ that  _ doesn’t surprise me,” Adora said, putting her head in her hands.

“He thought I was the shit for that. When he pulled me off him, he had this smile on his face, which looking back was supremely fucked up… He literally like,” Catra lifted up her own hand and curled it into a fist, “was holding me by the shirt collar and turned me around to all the other kids and said we were leaving. He was transferring us to different homes.”

_ “Pack your things. You’ll no longer be living here.” Hordak’s booming voice reverberated through kitchen. Catra swung her leg up, trying to kick him again. _

_ “Let me go, bastard!” _

_ “Where are we going?” asked Lonnie. _

_ “You’ll all be going to different homes as of tonight. No more questions, do as you’re told.” _

_ “Put me down!” _

Catra swallowed. “I was trying to kick him because he  _ wouldn’t _ put me down. Guess the fact that I was willing to fight him impressed him or something, so I went home with Hordak, instead of getting sent to another home like everybody else.”

_ “Hmm. You’ll be coming with me. What is your name, young lady?” _

_ Catra didn’t answer. Only hung her arms at her side and stared daggers into his dumb bald head. That was the  _ wrong  _ thing to do. Shaking her violently by the collar, he demanded once more, “What is your name? I will not ask again.” _

_ “Catra! It’s Catra!” she squeaked. His iron grip loosened and she fell to the floor. “Ow!” _

_ “I like you, Catra…” _

“Wow.” Adora’s deep breath broke Catra’s crummy trip down memory lane. “So because Hordak got you away from Shad- sorry, Mrs. Weaver, he was like your hero?”

Catra scoffed, rolling her eyes to force her tears back down, “Yeah, at first. Man was a fucking monster but I just wanted  _ so  _ badly for someone to love me that I was just blinded by how terrible he was. ‘Cause when I first moved in with him, he let me speak Spanish, I got a room of my own, he told me all about his ‘operations.’ He even told me that I was the only one smart enough to be in charge of them one day, but he was just grooming me, took all those privileges away when I ‘messed up.’ Hordak never physically laid a hand on me-” actually he never even hugged Catra in all the time she was in his care “-but he was just as manipulative and abusive as Shadow- fuck, now you’ve me doing it, Weaver. He just let me think that everytime he hurt me it was  _ my  _ fault and because of something  _ I  _ did.”

“So what changed?” Damn her eyes full of sympathy. “When did you realize...”

“He had a kid.”

“Really? I didn’t- I didn’t know that…” Adora trailed off.

_ Oh did your files not tell you anything about that? God fucking damn it, I’m actually gonna have to talk about that little shit! _

“I mean it was  _ already  _ shitty by the time that demon came into the house,” clarified Catra, practically snarling. “When Hordak got mad, I was like his favorite to take it out on and he always made it out to be something I did. He’d start favoring other kids and that of course, threatened everything,  _ everything  _ I worked for so I’d fucking lose it. We’d either get into a massive fight or I would do something shitty to whatever foster kid he was favoring that week and… and so he’d kick me out.

“The worst part of getting kicked out? I actually really liked some of the families Hordak put me with. I mean, he was still like their lord or whatever, but some of them were really good people, Adora. Like, actual couples fostering cause they wanted to adopt.” Catra sniffed- oh great, she was crying,  _ that  _ was a twist. “I’d move in and they’d be thoughtful and understanding and we’d get really close. But once Hordak got word that someone  _ actually  _ might want me, he’d pull his strings and have me sent back to him. And I would always think 'oh it's ‘cause he wants me this time, he finally changed his mind' and we'd do it all over again!” Frustrated enough she could fucking scream, Catra kicked the table, not even feeling the pain the reverberated up her leg.

“Son of a bitch,” whispered Adora, putting her head in her hands. “And- and the kid?”

“Oh yeah, that piece of shit. Hordak was always trying to have a biological kid ‘cause I guess he wanted someone to take over for him. You know, the whole foster system charade wasn’t just to siphon money from the government for his gangs and shit, but so he could groom some poor kid to could take over, when he eventually died, from I dunno alcohol poisoning?” Catra threw up her hands. God, this whole conversation was making her nauseous.  _ And  _ her head was pounding like it was about to explode, how’d she miss that?

“And that was supposed to be you?” Adora finished for her.

“Duh,” Catra rolled her eyes, “except I was  _ never _ what he wanted. I was ‘too emotional’ and ‘reckless’ so at some point, I was just  _ trying _ to get kicked so I could be as far away as possible from that maniac. Meanwhile, he fucked any woman that moved. Did you know he was practically sterile? As if that fucking stopped him! Magically, he got one of his mistresses or girlfriends or some slut pregnant. Almost burned down our house one night he was so angry she was denying him custody.”

“Oh no…”

Nails digging into her palms with enough force to draw blood, Catra spit her next words. “He ruined that woman’s life Adora, trying to get to this baby. When he did get custody, he made sure she never saw her son again! And then Hordak ruined my life by making me the baby’s nanny! I watched him so often that some dipshits at my high school started some rumor it was mine and that Hordak adopted him to cover up the fact that I was some slutty teen mom. I cannot emphasize how much of a monster this child was, Adora. Charlie Hordak. Next in line for the throne. Fucking demon brat.” She shook her head and pulled her drink closer.

“Catra, please tell me you ran away.” Adora looked like she had a headache of her own. Whatever, it was definitely a step up from having the other woman on her knees and apologizing, blaming herself for it all. And that was weird, how Catra didn’t want that. It’s not like she’d spent all those years with Charlie making it all out to be Adora’s doing cause she dared leave her in this dead end town full of evil bastards and their ugly, gross babies.

_ “Go the fuck to sleep!” growled Catra, pushing the stroller back and forth trying to rock Charlie into a calmer state. Her movements just enraged the little shit more, his screams growing louder and catching in the judgement of everyone else at the playground. _

_ Slumping back onto the bench, Catra blinked back tears. This. This was her weekend. Working nine hours at Office Depot and then going home so Charlie could vomit on her all night, and Hordak could yell at her to make  _ his  _ baby stop crying. Now she’s was in public, in front of bitchy moms with the kid that wasn’t even  _ hers _ because her psychopath of a foster father threatened to take away her art supplies if she didn’t take Charlie for a walk in his stroller. _

_ Laughter from behind her made Catra sit up straight. “Fuck!” It was those kids from home room. Catra turned back to a still crying Charlie. “You need to shut up, right now!” _

_ “Sup, Catra!” one of them yelled while another one of them snickered, “Knew it was her kid.” _

_ Her kid? Her kid? This little fucker was white! _

_ She tried to tell herself to ignore them, that Hordak really would take away her supplies if she got in another fight and just left Charlie in his stroller. But not even Charlie’s velociraptor screeching could drown out their taunting. _

_ “Bet he has her freaky eyes.” _

_ Oh,  _ that  _ was it. _

_ “Fuck off!” Catra’s voice shook as she hissed at the other teens, flashing her “freak” teeth and eyes wide at them. _

_ “Woah,” their leader laughed, throwing his hands up, “calm down puta!” _

_ Catra’s line of sight went red. She stood and without think, chucked one of Charlie’s toys and hitting the leader square in the forehead, screaming, “¿A quién cresta creen que le vienen a decir puta? ¡Vayan a chupar huevo para quitarse lo pendejos, chuchesumadre!” Fuming, she grabbed another one of the toys from the stoller, ready to throw it, but they were scattering, screaming something about crazy bitches. “Gillipollas!” _

_ Once they were gone, Catra fell back to the bench, tears streaming down her face and nails pulling at her hair. “Pendejos todos,” she whispered to soothe herself, swallowing the urge to scream bloody murder at a child’s playground. Charlie had finally shut the hell up and was now looking up at her with watery green eyes and a toothless grin. Then he straight up giggled. Oh, so he had enjoyed watching her be bullied? Of course he fucking did! Like father, like son. _

_ “I hate you,” Catra hissed at him, flashing her teeth again but he just giggled more. “You stupid brat! You ruin everything!” From home to school, she couldn’t escape. And as long as she was stuck in this backwards town, they’d throw every detrimental latina stereotype her way even though she liked  _ girls.  _ “I bet Adora doesn’t have to watch a demon baby! I bet no one thinks  _ she’s  _ a teen mom!” Catra kicked the stroller. Charlie loved it and laughed louder. “Or a freak! Why’d she have to leave me here and leave me with  _ you?  _ Why am  _ I _ stuck here and not her?” _

Huh. Now Catra was back at a park, sitting next to the woman she cursed out in front of a baby. Now she was telling her about all those years in an actual civil manner, which is definitely not how she had seen this playing out. Not that the fantasies even mattered anymore. No way in hell Catra was  _ not  _ going back to the crying and screaming. ‘Cause while Catra had been fifteen and babysitting the world’s worst baby for her shit excuse of a father, Adora was fifteen and having panic attacks in hospital bathrooms cause her guardian was dying of cancer. So what good would it do for Catra to lecture Adora pain? Shit’s all relative anyway. Guess the universe was hell bent on ruining both their lives, and was getting a little too bold with its creative decision on just how to make them miserable.  

“You really think I didn’t try to get out of that hell hole? I tried  _ eight  _ fucking times, Adora!” Catra growled, stabbing her dinner with a chopstick. “Hordak cut me off from  _ everybody,  _ every home I’d been in and he took every dollar I ever made. He wouldn’t let me out of the house past nine-”  _ after I crashed his stupid Mustang-  _ “and all the cops were in his pocket. Whenever I could get some hands on cash I’d save to buy a bus ticket and get the fuck out of there, go to New Mexico or Texas of all places, but  _ Charlie  _ would snitch on me every single time! I don’t even know how he kept finding out about the money or the tickets but no matter what I did- he’d rat me out to Hordak!

“I  _ barely  _ got out of there. Hordak was gonna have me working as one of his mules the summer I graduated, but I wasn’t staying another god damn day in that dead end town. I just wanted to see the world, you know? Anyway, Hordak and his new girlfriend took Charlie to some birthday party, and while they were out I stole a bunch of shit from the house, pretty much all of Charlie’s toys and movies, and went down and sold them to that one shop we got all our clothes from, remember?” Catra stopped once she ran out of breath.  _ Holy crap. _

“Yeah, of course I remember that place. You loved that place ‘cause they had a cat who liked to lounge in their window and you would make us stop there  _ every day  _ after school so you could see him, remember?” Adora gave her a gentle nudge, and for some reason, it actually made Catra feel better. She’d been vomiting all this emotional baggage on Adora and Adora was actually not adding to what was making her feel like shit? Wow. Here she was, doing the opposite.

And she remembered. Just like she said she did.

“So it was enough for a bus ticket?” asked Adora when Catra paused, too busy thinking about how Adora had a soul and how much seven year old Catra had really loved that fucking window cat.

“Uh, yeah but I did pawn a shit ton of jewelry that I stole from one of his safes, which set me up splendidly. Then I took the cash and bolted. Made it to New Jersey before I ran out of money, and had to get a job there, then I changed my name. I had to live there for a little while actually- do  _ not  _ laugh at me Adora, I was dirt poor!” Not really thinking, Catra punched her in the shoulder.

“Hey, I lived in New Jersey for a while with Mara, so I retain the right to make fun of you all I want.” Adora smirked as she shoved another sporkful of noodles in her mouth.

“‘Retain the right’” mocked Catra and now it was Adora who almost choked on her food laughing.  _ Now that’s vindication. _

Noodles spilling out of her mouth, Adora retorted, “Shut up.”

“Dork.” It made a  _ ton  _ of sense that Adora lived in New Jersey. New Jersey was like state version of Adora.

_ Didn’t you like living in New Jersey?  _ Scorpia’s voice echoed in her brain.  _ Shut! Up!  _ she hissed back at her conscience.

“Catra, it sucks you had to live with Hordak and take care of his kid-” Adora started but Catra cut her off by kicking her in the shin. Her yelp was practically cathartic. “What the heck, Catra?”

_ Heck? Awe, she’s cute.  _ “You were going to apologize, weren’t you?”

“I was  _ not _ !” she whined. Catra rolled her eyes.

“Oh, Adora you’re  _ such  _ a bad liar.” Clicking her tongue, Catra leaned in closer to Adora. “Look, I don’t need anyone’s pity, okay? And  _ you  _ need to stop apologizing for shit that wasn’t your fault, so every time you even try I’m going to kick you. And wouldn’t it be such a shame if my boot ruined your fancy expensive pant suit?”

Adora just grumbled and continued rubbing her shin. “Damn it, Catra! What  _ do  _ you want me to say- oh my God, I have an idea!” she squealed after cutting herself off mid sentence. Before Catra could even ask, Adora was catapulting herself over the table and reaching for her backpack on the other side.  _ Oh, an idea for the book,  _ Catra realized when she pulled out her notebook.  _ Had no idea where the fuck  _ that  _ was going. _

The She Ra bible looked a  _ lot  _ different from the last time Catra had seen it. Adora worked mostly on her laptop during their dinner sessions and only pulled her source material out when a metaphorical light bulb went off in her pretty little head. Why she didn’t just type it out on the computer, Catra didn’t know. She just really loved that fucking book.

The night it spent at Catra’s, the notebook looked like a notebook. Now it looked like a middle age white woman’s scrap book that morphed with some poor college kid’s loose leaf textbook and was now begging for death. Sticky notes stuck out from every corner, papers were stuffed in crevice after crevice and a pen flew out and knocked her on the forehead when Adora whipped it open.

“Uh, Adora,” Catra said, rubbing her forehead. Why, it wasn’t like she already had a migraine. “I think you need a new notebook. Jesus, I thought your feet looked like they were gonna explode!”

“No, I’m attached to this one! And it has vital information that I still haven’t typed up- ugh, where is my stupid pen?’ Adora’s rambling/frantic search combo cut off when Catra handed her back the pen. “I’ll- I’ll get a new one when I finish, okay? But I really gotta write this down before I lose it.”

“Lose what?”

“My train of thought!” Catra would have to be force fed glass before she admitted it, but Adora was super adorable when she got like this. Taking a long sip of her coke until it drained down to ice, Catra watched Adora’s eyebrows and nose scrunch up as she stuck her tongue out, trying to write as fast as humanly possible.  _ How am I attracted to her right now? _

“Are you gonna let me in on this or-”

“Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking right before the climax-”

“Ha, climax.”

“ _ Ugh,  _ Catra.” Adora shook her head, trying not to laugh as Catra cackled, before going back to her no nonsense sensibility. “Anyways as I was saying, when book Entrapta, Catra, and Scorpia are in the process of hacking the Black Garnet, I was originally thinking that one of the other soldiers ratted it out-”

Catra found herself cutting her off, “Yeah, it’s Kyle by accident, trying to impress Rogelio or something? And like he’s in front of Hordak’s sanctum or something?”  _ I can’t believe I understand all of this. And that I’m willingly participating in it! _

“Mhmm! Okay, but what if instead, we give Hordak his own snitch?” With that, she started writing up a storm again in her notebook, that poor son of a bitch. Catra bit back a smile; Adora’s ponytail was  _ everywhere,  _ swishing wildly everytime she made some dramatic movement and she was sticking her tongue back out.

Snitch? What the hell did she mean by snitch- _ oh _ .

“You wanna put  _ Charlie _ in the novel?” asked Catra once Adora calmed down and finished whatever train of thoughts were possessing her to write like a mad woman.

Adora nodded and shook her pen in Catra’s direction, “Sort of. I’m thinking, he’s not  _ really  _ Charlie, like he won’t have a name or anything.”  _ Fucking cold blooded, Adora. I like your style.  _ “In my mind- I guess I’m picturing like a half robot, half devil toddler?”

“Half robot, half devil toddler?” snorted Catra, throwing her head back. Wow, she was fucking good.

“What?” Adora tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Is that dumb?”

_ All of this is dumb on  _ some  _ level, babe.  _ “No, no! It’s fucking perfect!” Catra laughed, shoving Adora in the shoulder. “That’s  _ basically _ what he was. So what, does he like snitch that we’re messing with the rune stone?”

“Big time. Normally he just goes around the Fright Zone spying for Hordak, so I’d have to go back and establish that in the earlier chapters. Okay, hmm, this is good. What if- what if he doesn’t speak? What if “Charlie” just records people speaking with like camera in his head and plays a projection of it back to Hordak? Ugh, no that won’t work, it’s just a rip off of Star Wars!” she sighed all dejected and despondent and kinda cute, pressing her palms into her eyes.

“Whatever Adora, the idea just needs some tweaking. Do you always give up this fast?” Adora peeked between her fingers to glare daggers and Catra snickered. “Look, when Charlie was learning to talk, he’d mostly just repeat what people were saying around him. He  _ could  _ say other stuff, it wasn’t like he had any development problems, but I guess he just enjoyed fucking with people? It annoyed the  _ hell  _ out of everybody, ‘specially me.” Catra twirled a curl around her finger, rolling her eyes at that memory and how that little shit would follow her around the house yelling “tits” cause she said it once- under her breath. “That’s not normal, is it?”

“Um, I’m not sure. I’d have to ask Bow, he’s kinda of the expert on that kind of stuff,” shrugged Adora. “So, you’re thinking that he repeats whatever he hears back to Hordak?”

Catra put her head back into her hand, “Uh, sort of, but he is half robot, remember? So what if he records audio instead of visual like  _ you _ were thinking?” And just like that, her eyes lit up and that aggravating gorgeous smile was back. The light bulb had gone off.

“Oh that’s perfect, Catra!” Adora gasped, dropping her pen and shaking Catra by the shoulders.

“You’re welcome?” she muttered as Adora turned back to the notebook. Now that the moment was  _ definitely  _ over, Catra was full on reeling from the lost sensation of Adora’s grip and trying to keep her mind from wandering and betraying her with thoughts about how fucking strong that woman was and how that made her so damn  _ sexy _ and-  _ Stop it! We get it, Adora’s buff as fuck. Try not to melt, okay? _

And trying she was. Catra shoved her straw in her mouth hoping for an immediate distraction and a solution to her now dry mouth but she was met with no liquid, only cold air and ice chunks in her throat.  _ Son of a bitch!  _ How’d she run out so freaking fast? Ugh, dumb Bright Moon was always ripping her off. It was complete bullshit they put so much ice in there! Ugh, next time she was making Adora order two for her-  _ no  _ ice, see how they liked that. Sighing as she put her hands on her throbbing temples, Catra was ready to just throw in the towel and let her fucking  _ brutal  _ migraine take the wheel when Adora slid her drink over to her. She didn’t even look up from what she was writing, saying, “You can have mine.”

_ She just… gave me hers? _

That left Catra gaping like a fish at the styrofoam cup in front of her. Why,  _ why  _ was Adora being so nice to her? Why’d she have to go and make it so easy to fall for her, when this wasn’t going to last, when curiosity was going straight up murder this motherfucking cat! God, did she even  _ care  _ that Catra could never let herself be with someone like her?

_ Wait, why can’t you be with a personality such as Adora’s?  _ Entrapta’s voice rang in her head. Halle-fucking-lullah. Now  _ both  _ her roommates were now renting out room in her thoughts.

_ We’re on a terrible trajectory, okay?  _ Catra screamed back, stifling a groan.

_ Because you believe that, in this elaborate metaphor you’ve constructed, that your brakes will fail and you will ruin it? Or Adora will leave you? That’s your hypothesis? Catra, a true scientist knows there are more than two outcomes in an experiment! And sometimes, they’re positive results! Like explosions! _

Okay, Catra had definitely heard Entrapta say shit like that. So, she wasn’t going crazy that was good. Just catching feelings and falling for a really pretty, smart, funny and fucking strong woman.  _ Well I’m not a fucking scientist okay! And maybe I don’t deserve a positive result, okay?! _

That was the major bombshell, wasn’t it? Weaver and Hordak spent fourteen years convincing Catra she didn’t deserve a happy ending, so what, she had just continued to self sabotage for the next ten years? Shut out her friends and treated dating- and love, intimacy, trust- like it was some game of Russian Roulette? Beat herself into a pile of self pity ‘cause she refused to let herself hope, because hope made her weak? Slowly wasting away and waiting for her mom’s fate to become her own?

And what was Adora if not a wake up call, a slap to the face and a dunking in ice water to shake her from the very attitude that was killing her? What was Adora if not a second chance for Catra to let herself hope?

_ Just drink the fucking drink, Socrates!  _ Catra yelled at her mental self. Adora was still caught up in her newest idea, tearing through pages in the She Ra bible, and muttering to herself when she wasn’t chewing on the end of her pen. Moving at a snail’s pace until she had the drink- then rushing it to her mouth at the speed of fucking light- Catra let herself drink Adora’s dumb soda. “Ugh, rootbeer! Seriously, Adora?”

Of course Princess Terrible Taste wasn’t even listening. “What if Hordak called him ‘my little spy?’ That’s creepy enough, right?” Adora wondered out loud.

“Well it’s definitely nicer than anything he called me,” laughed Catra.  _ Oh thank fucking God, a change of subject! Take that brain Entrapta and Scorpia! _

Adora’s face twisted into some worn expression of guilt at Catra’s little comment. _ Here we go.  _ Catra started rolling her eyes before Adora could even begin. “Are you- are okay with this?”

“Huh?”  _ There goes getting to kick her again. _

“I mean putting Charlie in the story,” clarified Adora, gesturing to barely functioning notebook just on the brink of explosion- much like Catra’s damn brain. “Having him here opens a lot of doors for the plot and I just-” she stopped to chew her lip, “I don’t want it to bring up unwanted feelings. You know, on top of the ones you’re already feeling because- because of She Ra.” Throwing up her hands, Adora cut off her ramblings, leaving the ball in Catra’s court.

“Dude it’s  _ fine.  _ Like I already have ideas for a design for him and everything, you really want all that to go to waste?” Catra asked as she crossed her arms and leaned onto the table. And she wasn’t joking; legit, Catra could picture his little devil wings and pointed tail, horns, the Horde logo on his little baby clothes, maybe a swath of hair like that clump of red hair everyone was always gushing over.

“Oh.” Adora smiled, fiddling with her hands until she finally rested them on the table next to Catra’s.

“But you owe me,” Catra smirked, looking at Adora out of the corner of her eye and trying not to think about the way sunlight on its last breath framed her like the goddess she was. “‘Cause now I’m going to be having non stop nightmares about Charlie and all the shit he pulled. Did you know he threw a fucking beer bottle at my head when he was two years old? Unprompted and everything!”

“Was it- was it empty?” Adora’s eyes narrowed and she leaned closer.

Catra scoffed. “Fuck no it wasn’t. It was like half full so I had beer and blood just running down my face, that was  _ fun. _ Hordak refused to take me to the hospital. Instead he just paid some next door neighbor who happened to be a nurse to stitch me up and told her it happened to me at a party I snuck out to. Like I’d be caught dead at one of those.... You wanna know what the worst part was, Adora?”

She nodded.

“Charlie said he was  _ sorry _ when I came home and was all bandaged up. Adora, he actually looked like he felt bad.” Catra sighed, hugging herself with one arm. “Hordak didn’t like that. He saw any emotion that wasn’t pure male rage as weakness and that made  _ me  _ one big blotch in his plan. Hordak may have favored the kid but he was still incredibly shitty to him, to all of us actually. Sometimes it felt like I was the only person standing between Hordak hurting Charlie, or any of the other foster kids. Is that… I dunno, dumb?”  _ Or weak? _

When Catra looked up at Adora, she was staring at the table. “I don’t think so. I know that feeling pretty well, actually.”

“You know, sometimes I wonder if Charlie wouldn’t have turned out so fucked up if he’d been raised by his mom.” Their fingers brushed, and Adora caught her eye. “Like, how does someone grow up without an adult who really loves them? How does that not make them a fucking sociopath?”

“You did it, Catra. You survived your mom… taking her life, and then everything Weaver did and then Hordak, and- and I know you’re not a bad person.” As her words hung in the air, Catra just let her hand fall limp as Adora’s fingers laced with her own. In her touch Catra felt a storm coming for her.

_ Yeah, it doesn’t feel that way, Adora.  _ Catra let those words sit on her tongue. Adora would only argue with her and try to prove that like the rest of her friends, Catra had sunshine pouring out of her ass, but at the end of the day, she’d be wrong and her belief would have been wasted on nothing. Instead, Catra just cleared her throat and pulled her hand away from Adora’s touch. “So since you asked like fourteen questions in a row, can I finally ask  _ you  _ one?”

“Uh, sure I guess?” the authoress shrugged. She had pulled her arms closer to her body and had hidden her hands.

“Mara. I wanna know about Mara. You know, since you got to ask about my shitty foster father?” Catra couldn’t keep the cruelty from leaking into her voice, from throwing the defenses back up before she really did get to close, but she suspected that was  _ not  _ the reason Adora began to curl further in on herself. “You gonna tell me why  _ she’s _ in She Ra? Why she’s some big mystery character and how you  _ never  _ seem to talk about her?”  _ Don’t I get to know about the person that took you away? Don’t I at least get that? _

Taking a shaky breath, Adora looked out over the horizon at the almost set sun.  _ Wow, that’s dramatic.  _ “Mara was my godmother and- and  _ you  _ knew that, but she wasn’t… she wasn’t a  _ mother. _ ”

“What does that mean?”

“It  _ means _ , she was not my mom and she never made any attempt to be my mom.” Adora practically spit the words. Then her voice fell quiet. “She never wanted kids. I guess she thought she was gonna spend her whole life working on her career but… then there was the car accident-”  _ car accident?  _ “and when Weaver got custody of me she and Hordak burned any trace of their actions, she got stuck chasing dead ends for twelve years until she managed to find me. Mara was, I dunno, unstable? I think it was guilt for what happened to my mom and dad and... She tried to give me a normal life, but she pushed herself too hard and eventually her body just couldn’t take it. Course she didn’t  _ tell  _ me about the cancer until it was like stage four and she  _ didn’t  _ say anything about it spreading to her brain, no I had to learn that from the doctor like three weeks before… Mara never told me anything until it was too late.” Adora’s anger crescendoed as she slammed her fist on the table before surrendering to the hurt so visible in her expression.

“Because she was uncomfortable with vulnerability, damn it,” muttered Catra.  _ Jesus Motherfucking Christ.  _ Of course Adora didn’t hear her say that ‘cause she was too busy trying not to cry.

“Actually it’s funny,” Adora sniffed, “Mara dying  _ is  _ kind of how I met Glimmer and Bow.”

Catra raised an eyebrow giving her the okay to continue. “Glimmer’s dad died of leukemia around the same time.”  _ Oh  _ that’s  _ why he’s dead in She Ra! Fuck Adora, did you just decide to take no survivors?  _ “We’d moved to Bright Moon and I just spent all my time in the hospital, which is how I met Glimmer’s mom. She was a surgeon at the time, now she’s the head administrator,” she explained when Catra made a face. “Then she recommended a program her daughter was in for kids whose parents were, you know-”

“Dying painfully of cancer?” Catra finished for her. Adora nodded.

“Jesus, Adora that’s- that’s terrible. I always just assumed you and Mara rode off into the sunset.” Adora snorted. “No, seriously! I can barely remember mami dying and I never knew my dad, so I can’t really imagine how fucking painful that probably was. I’m sorr-”

_ WHACK!  _ The side of Adora’s foot collided with her knee before Catra could even finish. “ _ FUCK!  _ Did you- did you just kick me, Adora?” she yelled, clasping her knee. How did it hurt like a bitch she was  _ barefoot! _

A pleased smile on her face, Adora told her all smug and proud, “You said no more apologizing remember? And then you kicked me, do you remember that? I don’t want pity either, Catra. Trust me, I got  _ plenty _ in the hospital and at school.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Fair’s fucking fair, I guess.”

“Yeah it is,” Adora laughed as she reached out to shove Catra.  _ Oh so that’s how she wants to play it? _ Catra ducked, obviously, cackling as Adora caught the table and knocked Catra’s sketchbook.

“Ha! You idiot-”

“Catra is that me? Oh my god-”

Whirling around, Catra was met with her sketchbook no longer open on her ugly ass guardian of six years, but to the drawing of Adora, hungover and sleepy, from that day in the car when Catra realized they were a car driving at top speed towards a brick wall. The drawing inspired by her concerned roommate that showed Catra she was capable of facing her demons as long as she went really fucking slow. The drawing she’d  _ completely  _ forgotten was even in there.  _ Oh FUCK! _

Adora moved to take a closer look but no fucking way was Catra about to let this play out. She wasn’t proud of it, but Catra  _ did _ have a badass reputation to uphold, so she shoved Adora to the other end of the bench and grabbed the sketchbook, flipping it closed and putting it on the other side of her before She Hulk herself could recover. “ _ Not  _ gonna happen, Princess.”

“It’s of _ me,  _ Catra!” Adora huffed, lifting herself back up without  _ any  _ help from her arms or the table. “Why don’t I get to see?”

“Pfft, it’s not of you! Way to flatter yourself, Adora!” squeaked Catra, looking anywhere but pouty face Adora inching closer to her side of the bench. She put her hand behind her on the sketchbook just to be safe. Adora was getting dangerously used to getting her way with Catra, mainly because Catra was so fucking weak when it came to her, so better safe than sorry she let her feelings into the open for Adora to gloat in.

“Mhmm Catra, it’s just of some _other_ woman with blonde hair, blue eyes and a pink sweatshirt _and_ the same nose shape.” Adora rolled her eyes. Jesus, how good of a look did she get at the drawing?

Catra scowled. “Maybe.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst!” she whined. Her shoulders fell and the disappointed smile stayed, but she let the conversation die of natural causes for once (oh, so  _ now _ she's learning?) pulling her phone from out of her pocket. Eyebrows flying up, Adora’s expression shifted from bummed to confused as she scrolled.

Catra took another sip of her root beer (okay maybe,  _ maybe  _ she liked it) before asking, “You okay?”

“Uh yeah.” Adora waved her off, “It’s just Bow and Glimmer have been fighting- again- in the group chat for the last hour.”

“Sparkles and Rainbow fight?” snorted Catra. Now  _ that  _ she’d like to see.

“Sometimes, but this doesn’t look very serious. I think they’re just arguing about The Good Place and whether Elhani or Chelanor should be canon. Bow thinks Chelanor so Glimmer sent him a bunch of Supernatural gifs to annoy him, cause she’s on team Elhani. I’d text back both are good but then they’d just turn on me,” Adora explained, setting her phone down.

Catra bent the straw with her nails, pulling it in and out of the lid even thought the little squeaks made her head shriek in pain so loud she thought about killing herself. “I don’t know what any of that means.”

“Oh, right.” Adora let out a dorky laugh and Catra’s heart skipped a beat. “I forgot you don’t really watch TV.”

Well that  _ wasn’t  _ her fault. Between working all the goddamn time and their busted up junkyard TV only getting reruns of Frasier lately, it’s not like Catra had the time or energy to sit down and binge. Plus, there was now a fuckton of streaming services? How was she supposed to pay for them all? Yeah, Entrapta could probably hook them up sweetly not a dime spent, but the master of chaos herself preferred fiddling with the apartment satellite dish to create a high pitched whistling noise that made everyone in the building get a nose bleed to helping pirate TV and movies.

Catra had learned two hours earlier Scorpia was using Marshmallow’s Netflix account… would it be weird of her to piggyback off them so she could watch all of whatever the fuck The Good Place was and then flex on Adora? Not weird right?

“Dude it’s getting _really_ late. You’re gonna miss your shift”- Catra started to stand up so she could begin packing their sea of food back together, when Adora perked up, a mischievous look in her eyes that Catra recognized and didn't like as she made a grab for her phone.

“Wait a sec, so you’ve  _ never  _ seen The Good Place?” she interrupted, “And you don’t know anything about it, right?”

Scowling, Catra plopped back down on the bench. “Duh, I  _ just _ said that Adora!”

“So... have you seen  _ this _ meme before?” A wicked smile on her face, Adora turned her phone around for Catra to see. Crossing her arms with an annoyed huff, Catra leaned and squinted.  _ Seriously, Adora? You’re trying  _ this  _ again? Whatever, it’s your funeral.  _ Pictured on her screen was a brunette who looked like some airline stewardess from the fifties in some sort of principal's office saying- according to the caption- "top me, top me, top me!"

The second it processed, Catra made an inhuman noise and scurried backwards as Adora erupted into laughter.  _ What in the fucking hell?  _ Catra panted and clutched her chest, having half the mind to take Adora’s drink and throw the rest in her face. See how she liked it. Catra  _ didn’t _ , unfortunately, because she was too occupied by the paranoid thought that Adora could read her  _ fucking  _ mind. Good God, if Catra was actually that fucking transparent then they were going to a have a real problem.

_ She’s just being dumb,  _ Catra told herself as Adora laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe, clutching her stomach and getting dangerously close to falling off the bench,  _ and weird _ . The thought of pushing her onto the ground and giving Adora what  _ she  _ wanted, not Catra, according to that smart ass suggestion of hers, was really fucking tempting. “Fuck you Adora!” she growled without an ounce of thought to her words.

“I’m sorry- I’m-” she tried to speak and breathe through her laughter at the same time, but that was a shitty plan because it only made her dorky adorable laughing worse-  _ damn it Adora! _ “Oh my God! So you’ve never seen lesbian Janet before-”  _ lesbian what?-  _ “so does that mean I win? I think it means I won... I win! I win! I win!” she started chanting, and this time Catra really did shove her.

“Yeah, yeah,” Catra grumbled over Adora’s cute little yelp, “now pay up or whatever, so we can  _ go _ , Princess.”

Taking a deep breath to stop that obnoxious, beautiful laughter, Adora nodded. “Who’s groveling now?” she winked.

“I swear to God I’m gonna punch you Adora,” threatened Catra, sticking her face in right smack in Adora’s. This close, oh  _ God  _ why’d she get this close, to Adora she could make out the scar on her chin, the result of trying to beat Catra at a cartwheel race when they were six. “Can you please just give the cash? Ugh, am I actually asking for money? Jesus Christ, who am I? What have you turned me into, Adora?”

Adora shrugged. Oh, so the lack of distance didn’t bother her at all? She was, what, enjoying this?  _ And you’re not? Please, you’ve been dreaming of a way to get this fucking close since you realized it was an actual option-SHUT UP!  _ “I like this version of you.” Her smile was enough to send Catra into cardiac arrest. How many times was this going to happen? Where Catra could see every imperfection, every scar and every attempt at eyeliner, every beautiful feature that made Adora a star in what was practically an empty, dark as fuck universe? Why did Catra let herself get here?

_ Curiosity killed the cat.  _ But only fanned the flames of her pathetic feelings. Falling back on her ass, Catra didn’t respond, only held out her hand for the money. By now she was used to the disappointment in Adora’s expression when she rejected her, used to the emptiness that followed running away. “Okay, so all I have are a bunch of fives, and then like some ones, but I think I have enough-” Catra looked up to see Adora chewing on her lip as she fished through her rainbow wallet, “so um, I think it’ll add up to twenty- hey, can I change my prize?”

“What- why do want a different prize?”  _ And why are we calling it a prize? That’s so lame. _ Catra searched Adora’s face for any sort of hint, and in her beady little eager blue eyes, she found her answer. “No,  _ no,  _ I said no Adora!” She threw both hands on her sketchbook.

“I won the bet fair and square, Catra!” shouted Adora.

“Yeah, when the bet was you giving me gas money, dummy!”

“Catra!” her whining echoed throughout the park, “It’s of me, why can’t I see?”

“‘Cause I fucking said so, and also it’s not of you!” Catra yelled back, sticking her tongue out for emphasis.

“Give it to me!”

“No!”

Dodging her desperate grab, Catra jumped up on the bench with a squeak, holding her sketchbook above her head and out of Adora’s reach. “You’re  _ so  _ childish, Catra!”

"Ha! And that makes  _ you… _ ?"

Right as Adora made her move to tackle her, Catra jumped down and landed on her ass, catching herself before she got a mouth full of dirt.

Ocean eyes met split ones like thunder meets lightning. Oh, so she want a  _ chase _ , huh? Catra, breathless and bold, looked up at Adora, a smirk peeling at her lips. “You’re on,  _ Princess.” _

Adora flew off the bench at the speed of fucking light, knocking over what sounded like cartons of their leftovers, but Catra was focused on something else- say scattering off the ground and bolting the other way. Clutching the sketchbook, Catra rounded the table, sliding around the corner. Adora copied her movements in the blink of a god damn eye. Holy fucking  _ shit  _ that woman was fast.

If Catra wasn’t so hellbent on escaping embarrassment via scathing vulnerability, she’d be really,  _ really _ turned on.

“Awh, are your princess shoes slowing you down?” teased Catra, flashing her teeth. They were now on opposite sides of the table. Adora’s sparkly blouse had tipped down, giving Catra a _ wonderful  _ view.

_ WHAM _ ! Adora slammed her hands down on the table and cocked her head. “I took them off, remember?”

“ _ Fuck _ .”

Another round around the table and damn it, Catra was already out of breath. Not out of adrenaline, and damn good thing too, cause it kinda seemed like Adora could chase her all day long without even breaking a sweat. A slide in the dirt. A dodge of her hands. She was getting tired, and Adora was going to catch her.

And Catra knew that. She’d always known that. Here they were, chasing each other like it was the glory days of being eight years old on the playground, when Catra’s speed and agility beat Adora’s brute strength as they collected splinters from wood chips and scraped knees on concrete like they were stickers or pokemon cards. But even then Adora would catch up because she was either determined or patient enough to ration her strength- or she was just stronger than Catra altogether. Those days when they could get rough and tumble, pull each other’s hair and blacken each other’s eyes but they were never in danger, never with each other. Not when they  _ had _ each other.

Just like then, Adora’s hands latched onto Catra’s jacket like they always latched onto her ratty t-shirt, pulling Catra towards her as Catra pulled away, screaming and laughing. “Let go, Adora!”

Just like then, physics did its worse and they went tumbling into the rocks and dirt just like they fell to the wood chips, Adora’s fall softened by her elbow meeting Catra’s stomach, pinning both her wrists down above her head before she could wiggle out and escape, giggling, “I got you, Catra. I win!”

“Yeah.” Catra’s breathing was too damn heavy for her liking- but Adora was  _ straddling  _ her. Fucking straddling her! “You did.”

It was in that moment that they both realized the position they were in. Adora’s cheeks bloomed a tomato red, her chest a matching shade, but she wouldn’t release Catra from this BDSM-esque nightmare she’d trapped them both in. Her grip only tightened, her hands shaking. Catra on the other hand, Catra was doing  _ great  _ trying to the ignore the uncomfortable warmth that started in her stomach and was getting lower and lower and lower…  _ Damn it!  _ Catra lifted her head an inch only to see that Adora’s blouse had come loose from her pants and was now rustling in the wind, giving Catra a front row seat to her abs.  _ I’m in hell, I’m in hell, I’m in hell. _

“I- um,” stuttered Adora, “sorry?” Not sorry enough to get off, apparently.

“Are you?” Catra hit back.

She laughed a little and the warmth inside Catra’s stomach practically exploded. “No, not really.”

“Looks like your stupid meme came true.”

“Huh, I guess it did. In- in a way!” Adora tacked on the last words in a messy rush. Something about Adora’s flushed face and sweaty palms made Catra think she wasn’t the only one wishing for death to fucking kill her just to free her from this arousal. They- for once- were on some sort of equal standing. Both embarrassed and turned on. And that emboldened Catra- knowing there was no imbalance of power, just a major dork literally shoving her tits in her face.   _ God’s she adorable. I could get used to this… _

Before her bravery vanished, Catra decided to see how far she could push Adora before Miss Top Me either broke and got off her or broke and- she swallowed. Catra just wanted tease her a little. Or a lot. But that was it! Rolling her hips in a slow motion, Catra stuck her tongue and revelled in the way Adora had to bite her lip to keep from making any noise.

“I hate you,” Adora tried to say and keep a straight face at the same time. Catra could feel her breath on her lips sending shivers down her back.

_ That’s too bad. ‘Cause I really think I’m falling in love you with.  _ She didn’t even fight that thought.

Catra ran her tongue over her teeth. “Doesn’t look like it, Princess.”

“Then what  _ does _ it look like?” Adora whispered. They were an inch apart.

“You  _ like _ me, Adora. You said it yourself.”

Letting her eyes close, Catra waited as Adora closed her eyes. She was tired of running away from this moment, tired of pretending this wasn’t what they were speeding towards at a hundred motherfucking miles an hour. She just wanted _Adora._ Even if she didn’t deserve her. Who fucking cared if it hurt in the end when the phantom presence of Adora’s lips made Catra feel like a god?

_ Just let curiosity kill this fucking cat. I’ve paid for deeper sins. _

Curiosity wasn’t killing anything tonight, as Catra’s head would have it. Right before the moment started it ended just as quick. A jolt of red hot pain seared through the middle of Catra’s brain and relit her migraine like goddamn wildfire. Every inch of her head screamed bloody murder as she cried out, her pulse filling her ears like a fucking high school drum team.

“Catra?!” Off her in an instant, Adora fell to Catra’s side and tried to pull her broken nails from her forehead. “Catra, what’s wrong?! Oh my God, did I hurt you?”

“No.” Catra bit down on her tongue and forced herself up. Adora was right there to assist her. Fucking Christ did she feel weak as shit right now. “I’m good, Adora I don’t need your help-”

“Is it your head?”

_ Fucking yes, it’s my head!  _ God, she was on the brink of tears. “Just breathe Catra.” Her voice was gentle as she could make but still nails on a chalkboard.

When was the last time it had been this bad? Probably not since Scorpia threw all the booze out. Was it the fall? Of course it was the fucking fall! “We need to go. You’ll miss your shift.”

Adora just stared at her, the bambi eyes back and worried as hell. Ugh, Catra didn't need this. “Are you sure? Do you just want me to take you home?”

“I said I’m  _ fine,  _ Adora,” she hissed through gritted teeth. Pushing past her, Catra bunched up all the containers- empty or not- and started shoving them in their white paper bags. At this point she didn’t gave a damn if they even took it home, she was just keeping up the front. There was no way she could afford to break down front of her now. Adora appeared by her side and began to copy her movements. Glancing out of the corner of her, Catra looked her partner up and down. She didn’t look disappointed or scared, just racked with worry and anxiety. Of course. Typical Adora.

The silence Catra imposed on the two them Adora honored as she went to pack up her back pack until “Oh hey, I forgot about this.”

“What?” mumbled Catra, wrestling her keys out of her jacket pocket.

“This,” Adora held out her hand to Catra. A tiny white bottle lay in her palm.  _ Excedrin  _ read the label.

Catra scoffed, another wave of pain assaulting her head. Wow even sarcasm hurt like a bitch. “Pills?”

“Yeah, I bought them for you at a drug store about a week ago. The label said they were for migraines so I thought they might help with your pain. I knew you wouldn’t take them from me so I’ve just been waiting for another bet so that I could give them to you. So, this can be my prize for winning tonight. You know, since you’d probably pour them down the garbage disposal if I just gave them to you.” Adora’s hand was warm as she placed the bottle in Catra’s hand.

“I don’t- I don’t have a garbage disposal. ‘Trapta broke it,” muttered Catra. Adora bought her these? The actual name brand and not the knock off store one Catra had practically drained MegaMart of? These pills were  _ not  _ cheap by their standards and- and Adora had just  _ bought  _ them for- for  _ her _ ? Why?

_ Because she actually cares about you, wild cat!  _ Scorpia’s voice answered.

_ Yes, this evidence strongly supports this conclusion,  _ added conscience Entrapta.

“Oh, okay.” Adora gave her a small smile and then started picking up the food. “Look Catra, you can take me to work but I think after that you should go home, take one of those and rest.”

“Uh, what about you-”

“I’m capable of taking the bus, Catra. And I think I’d feel better if you weren’t driving when you’re in so much pain. Can you do that? For me?” Now the sun had set and Adora was standing in blue light, staring at her with eyes that still shone in the darkness, expecting an answer.

Incisors biting down on her tongue, Catra glanced down at the bottle in her hand. _ “I guess she thought she was gonna spend her whole life working on her career but… then there was the car accident.”  _ Adora’s deep dark secret from earlier rang in her head.

“Fuck it, I guess I could use the night off.”

“Oh thank God, I really thought you were going to argue with me.” Adora let out a sigh of relief. “So um, now I’m gonna take all the food back to car before you try and help, bye!” Before Catra could protest, Adora booked it for the car shoes in one hand and all their leftovers in the crook of her other elbow, backpack flopping up and down as she ran to her door.

Despite the pain, Catra rolled her eyes and let the smile on her face stay. Watching her almost made the anguish worth it. And she was right, as much as Catra hated to admit it. Driving in this condition was a bad fucking idea. Besides, she figured it was time to take Scorpia up on her offer from earlier to talk (shudder) about Adora and work through what she was feeling. Before it killed her.

Another look at the medicine in her hand and Catra’s thought from earlier came back to her full force.

_ I really think I’m falling in love with you. _

-

By the time Catra slumped into her apartment, boots dragging and skidding the dirty tile floor, her migraine had gone from a bite-down-on-your-tongue-so-hard-you-bleed ten to a mild four thanks to Adora’s Excedrin. No longer did it seem like she could hear every fucking sound in the universe or like every light was going to blind her on the spot.  _ How the hell did I drive Adora to work and then drive home without vomiting and/or passing out?  _ Okay, she did vomit getting out her car when she got to the apartment complex. Catra pressed the tips of her fingers to forehead and counted to ten before she shed her jacket and shoes and walked down the hall. Something in the living room sounded like John Stamos, so one of her roommates was home.  _ Probably Scorpia.  _

Exhaustion had hit her like a train on the way back from Bright Moon. So had the realization that not only did she have legitimate feelings for Adora that weren’t going away, but that she actually wanted to act on them. Ha! If only she had the guts.

“Catra!” Yep, Scorpia. The other woman was sitting on the couch crossed legged, eating a bowl of cereal and watching Full House reruns. Catra reeled back and hissed at her volume without even thinking, sending Scorpia into a flurry of whispered apologies. “Oh, oh sorry! Do you have a migraine? Ah man, I shoulda known-”

“It’s  _ fine,  _ Scorpia.” Catra replied with a huff, collapsing onto the cushion next to her, sketchbook landing in her lap. “What are you doing home? Thought tonight was that giant ass party?”

“Oh you mean our Cinco de Mayo celebration? That’s next week- hey do you wanna come, oh right you hate that stuff. No, I gave everyone the night off cause Babydoll rented out the place for his nephew’s bar mitzvah. Man, I am  _ so  _ proud of Kenny, he’s a good kid.” Catra rolled her eyes at the Cinco De Mayo party.  _ Dumb white people. _

“Wait, what are  _ you  _ doing home, wild cat? Don’t you usually work the hours before Adora gets off?” asked Scorpia as she shoveled more spoonfuls of cheerios in her mouth, never breaking eye contact.

Catra blinked. “I struck out.”

Scorpia just gaped at her. Snorting as the milk dripped from her spoon to their already  stained couch, Catra shut Scorpia’s mouth. “I’m  _ kidding. _ ”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah, I knew that.”

“Adora sent me home ‘cause I got another migraine,” Catra admitted in a whisper.

“And you listened to her? Woah." And Scorpia was back to gaping like a fish. “Yeah, we gotta keep Adora around so you don’t accidentally kill yourself.”

Rolling her head on the cushion, Catra stared up at their ceiling and hugged herself tighter. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Curiosity killed the fucking cat. Or in this case, a migraine, I dunno?”

“Ha, curiosity killed the cat, classic Catra.” Scorpia said with another slurp of her cereal. “Well that’s okay. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”

Catra sat up straight. “What did you say?”

_ Satisfaction? Where the hell did satisfaction come from? What the fuck is she talking about?!  _ Her brain was on the verge of an actual fucking explosion, and not from her migraine this time.

“You know, that’s the saying. Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back?” Scorpia explained again. “You haven’t heard the whole saying before?”

“ _ That’s  _ the whole saying?” Catra squeaked, flying out of her seat. God, she was gonna  _ murder  _ Hordak. Whether that deadbeat was six feet under like he belonged or was still breathing on top of his ivory throne, she was gonna kick his ass and punch his motherfucking brains out. That  _ wasn’t _ the whole saying? So he just picked the most threatening part and then mentally abused her for years with  _ four fucking words? _

“I mean, I’m pretty sure…” Scorpia stroked her chin as Catra flopped back down.

“God damnit, what lame excuse do I have now?” moaned Catra, throwing her head in her hands.

“Huh, did you say something?” Peeling her fingers away from her eyes, Catra looked up at Scorpia. Scorpia just waited there patiently, taking bites of her cereal every once and while, sitting there in sweatpants and a old t-shirt from a MegaMart Employee’s Day Out. Adora’s observation from earlier came to mind.

_ “You did it, Catra. You survived your mom… taking her life, and then everything Weaver did and then Hordak, and- and I know you’re not a bad person.” _

Adora was wrong. Catra hadn’t done it alone  _ entirely;  _ she had art teachers, foster parents, coworkers who let her crash on their couch, her life was not completely defined by the cruelty of others, the cruelty she inflicted on herself. And now she had Entrapta and Scorpia.

“Hey, remember earlier how you said I could talk to you… about the Adora stuff?” Catra’s words came out slow, but Scorpia perked up so fast that cheerios flew all over their carpet. Bye bye security deposit.

“You can talk to me about  _ anything _ Catra! Oh, and I  _ won’t  _ tell Entrapta, I know that bugs you. So what’s bothering you wildcat, do you want me-”

“No, calm down-” Catra held her hand up to shield her from Scorpia’s vibrant and  _ loud  _ excitement. “I just want… I just want help ‘cause I want to ask Adora out, okay? And- and I don’t know how, okay?”

Whatever mega excitement Scorpia was experiencing at the thought of them bonding over Catra’s emotional turmoil only got more intense. She lit up like a fucking Christmas tree and regret started seeping into Catra’s mind. Was this a bad idea? Too late. “Oh, oh, okay! I just- you’re asking her out? Oh this is so exciting! I gotta tell the whole club! Hold on, let me text Marshmallow he’s been wanting an update for a while-”

“Scorpia!” Catra yanked her phone out of her hand, “I just want help… asking her out.” God, those words felt weird to say.

“Right, right, sorry! So what are you thinking? Classy or casual? Dim-sum for two-sum or that French restaurant in Downtown? Hmmm, I did get food poisoning there, so that’s- that’s probably not a good idea. Maybe a movie? Oh, you know what we should do? We should brainstorm! Here, let me go get ‘Trapta’s whiteboard!” Scorpia didn’t even take a breath before bolting off the couch for the bathroom.

“And the cereal’s on the floor. Fucking great,” Catra muttered to herself, twirling the hair behind her ear. Scorpia would come through, Catra knew she would, it would just be a lot of  _ this  _ before they reached the conclusion. But Scorpia  _ was  _ helping her and she knew more about romance than anyone Catra knew, so she could have her fun.

_ You’re just delaying the inevitable,  _ that grueling abusive voice in her head was back as Catra stared at the empty bowl and the pathetic little Cheerios that surrounded it.  _ She’s gonna leave or you’re gonna fuck it up. Enjoy crashing the car, dumbass. _

_ Yeah, I know cause curiosity killed the cat,  _ Catra took a deep breath and opened her sketchbook to her first drawing of Adora. Tracing the lines of her soft face, Catra found her resolve.

_ But satisfaction brought it back. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters left! are you ready? psst, the Cinco de Mayo thing is important.
> 
> thank you to vkhavfrue, p4stel, naidam, andswordofgayskull for helping me with Catra's spanish.
> 
> note about Charlie: so yes, he goes around repeating what is said to him, but it's not echolalia, a symptom of autism spectrum disorder or other neuro-developmental disorders. if anything, he was written with Conduct disorder in mind, exacerbated by  
>  Hordak;s abuse. which is heart breaking in its own way.
> 
> [Adora's winning janet meme](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/184904348470/out-of-context-spoiler-for-the-next-chapter-of)  
> I'd love to hear what you thought of this chapter! your comment mean the whole world, even when they're small!
> 
> i know it's been a whole month, but you're welcome to come scream about season 2 with me at [princessofgayskull](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/)


	11. what about all that we built in just a couple weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perspective was an even bigger bitch than karma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are folks! part 11! we are coming to the close… but before we do, I think we’re in for a wild ride, wink wink
> 
> once again, thank you for never-ending patience and respect for my process. It allows me to present you with the best that I can do, something you all deserve. thank you for your supportive and sweet messages and for interacting with this story in the way that you do. 
> 
> ideally, this chapter would have been up much sooner, but I’m going through some med changes, and an unforeseen side effect of doing so revamped my OCD, so I’ve been dealing with daily spells of intrusive thoughts that hinder my ability to do well, almost anything. the good news is that i’ve dealt with OCD for almost ten years and my intrusive thoughts for almost 4 years, so i am no stranger to whiteknuckling it through the anxiety because fuck mental illness, you know? also, my sisters were like Savannah let’s rewatch Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and I couldn’t say no to seeing my good boy alphonse. 
> 
> anyway, here we go! I know I set up at the end of the chapter that Catra was finally, finally going to ask Adora out, but also this chapter is… 20k words… so… let’s just say another really important thing has to happen!
> 
> once again, major shout out to [johannas_motivational_insults](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026990) thank you for editing!!!!!!

“Okay, okay so  _ then  _ Catra and I were in line to buy the notebook, and this Jehovah’s Witness guy that I knew in high school comes out of  _ nowhere- _ ”

“Is this before or after you bought and spilled your extra large iced caramel cloud  macchiato on the salesperson?” Entrapta cut off Scorpia’s excited ranting to ask her fourteenth question since their room mate started telling the story three freaking minutes ago. Even from the corner of her bed wrapped up in her comforter- Scorpia’s solution to Catra’s chronic pain, swaddling her up like a burrito ‘cause it would “help her sleep”- the scratch like movements of Entrapta’s pen on her notebook could be heard loud and clear. So much for Catra sleeping. Or staying in Scorpia’s burrito that was squeezing the fucking life out of her. Catra had to wiggle for five whole minutes to fight the restraints of the blanket taking its sweet time suffocating her, trying not to grunt or curse as Scorpia fumbled around in the dark room before Entrapta got home. Hyped up on a major dose of caffeine, courtesy of the Starbucks at the Barnes and Noble they’d just got back from, Scorpia became just as annoyingly militant as she was motherly, insisting and whining and begging Catra call it an early night just because she got a  _ mild  _ headache at the bookstore and yawned like once. When Catra tried to fight Scorpia ‘cause she was a  _ grown up _ in charge of her own damn life, she ended up in the death burrito milliseconds before could claw her roommate’s eyes out.

“This is for your own good wild cat,” Scorpia gave a pronounced sigh as she went around the living room bumping into  _ every  _ piece of furniture trying to turning all the lights off, “Besides, don’t you wanna be at your best when ask Adora out?”

_ Screw you, Scorpia. _

That is  _ not  _ why Catra surrendered and stayed in her bed. Catra surrendered because she was fucking exhausted and the second her limp body hit her mattress the full weight of her fatigue kept her there as she wiggled and struggled against her blanket. Just to stick it to Scorpia for trapping her there, Catra had no plans to sleep once she was out of those death restraints. Nope. Instead, she flipped her burrito trapped body away from living room towards the window and once she oh so inconspicuously freed herself of the fabric, managed to fanagle her phone from her back pocket. Scorpia would be none the wiser that she was using it- especially since the comforter made for a great shield and Entrapta had turned on  _ every  _ single light in the apartment after she flung their door open announcing a decibel too loudly that the end of her shift brought her arrival.

Now they were having a heated discussion about the multiple disasters that happened at the store and Catra? Catra was texting Adora like she was some starry eyed sixteen year old high off the thrill of sticking it to her guardians and sneaking around in the dark to text her crush. Ugh, is this what she had become?  _ Fuck,  _ Catra was lame.

_ adora 9:46 pm _

Enjoying your second night off? ;)

_ Catra’s cell 9:47 pm _

scorpia made me go to bed e arly i feel liek im afucking teenager

i still can’t believe /you/ got  a night off

_ adora 9:47 _

__ Ha! Does she know you’re not sleeping?

me neither. I guess getting barred from important company meetings because they hate you has /some/ perks. 

Rolling her eyes, Catra texted out a quick response about how Scorpia was far from the boss of her and hit sent with the  _ click! _ of her nail, staring at the harsh artificial light of her screen and chewing on her lip as she waited for the three dots to appear at the bottom, the tell tale sign Adora was still interested in actually talking to her.

_Now that I want her, like_ really _fucking_ _want her, what’s to stop her from calling it off? She’s even more neurotic than I am, for god’s sake._

No, Catra shook that thought out of her head. It was dumb and moreover, an example of how fucking weak she could be. Damn it, why couldn’t she just  _ trust  _ Adora? Trust that she would try her best not to hurt her?

_ Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. _

If it hadn’t been for Scorpia and her big-mouth-and-heart-of-gold combo, Catra may have lived out the rest of her shitty life obsessing over the first half of the phrase, keeping herself in the darkness of her trauma and bitterness of her brokenness, using those four words as a cowardly excuse to kick people like Adora to the curb. Catra came within an inch of letting Hordak keep his chokehold on her, came within an inch of just letting him choke the happiness out of her all these years later. Duh, taking a shot meant Catra could get hurt, it meant she could crash the car and given her fucked up track record, she was probably going to, but better to emerge with a bleeding nose and broken ribs having had a riot of adoration than to let the stupid car stay in park.

Right?

“So,” Entrapta was saying, “would you classify your encounter with Manny as a positive one? Based on your proceedings I would assume so, but it’s best not to skewer the data with personal bias. What a rookie mistake!”

_ Data? They’re talking about a trip to an effing bookstore.  _ Catra just rolled her eyes as Scorpia began chattering off twice her normal speed, elegant as a caffeinated elephant.  _ A caffeinated elephant who cared enough to go to the disgusting mall with you.  _ Right, she was trying to be better.

This did give Catra an open window to sneak back around. Like either of them would notice if she crept to the edge of her mattress and reached down for sketchbook. Those two were so far wrapped up in their own weird ways of telling each other about their days that Catra could probably sketch for a couple of hours, hell, maybe the whole night if she wanted to and they’d be none the wiser.

“Ah, you know, I think it  _ was  _ going well at first, but then I-” With one swift movement, Catra reached down and grabbed her bag, the plastic crinkling in her hand, “well, I spilled the rest of my macchiato on him so then things got  _ super  _ awkward and then Barnes and Noble was kinda out of paper towels. So yeah, basically Catra had to pay by herself while I ran all the way to the food court. Don’t tell her, but I stopped for some Panda Express before I went back. I just never get to have it anymore!”

Crouching on her bed behind them in the shadows, Catra threw her hands up with a silent scoff. Oh so  _ that’s  _ what she’d been doing? Catra had sat outside the gross Bright Moon mall on an even grosser bench for… however long fifty two texts between her and Adora was…because Scorpia had the coffee mess “taken care of.”  _ Whatever, at least we  _ both _ got what we came for.  _ Catra reached into the bag and pulled out the victory of their visit, a lavender notebook that just  _ screamed  _ Adora- Catra had even sprung for the hard cover, fancy ribbon bookmark and everything- and laid it side by side with her sketchbook.

The plan they’d hammered out, the one without any expensive flower or fruit bouquets or jewelery- Catra almost vomited at thought- or Scorpia singing Careless Whisper in one of those T-Rex suits while Entrapta (also in a T-Rex suit) “played” it on the saxophone, was cut clean and simple: Catra was just going to ask if she wanted to get a drink with her and then gift her the notebook, since Adora proved herself Miss Thoughtful with that miracle bottle of Excedrin and Catra  _ definitely  _ couldn’t deny herself the chance to one up Adora. Pretty selfish of her to be motivated by the thrill of the competition, but it wasn’t  _ just _ that, or Catra’s need to prove she could thrive without handouts. Catra wanted to be like Adora, wanted to be someone who anticipated and responded to the needs of others; so if anything, this was a start with a  _ bunch  _ of perks. The notebook was all Catra’s idea and the last of Catra’s bakery tattoo money. Adora needed to retire her notebook anyway before it fucking exploded and took out all of Bright Moon. Maybe,  _ maybe _ Adora would let go of the struggling She Ra bible if she had an actual replacement and it came from someone, Catra swallowed the rising bile in her throat, meaningful.  

If only the thought of physically handing her the book didn’t make Catra’s skin itch so fucking much.

 _But what if it’s not enough?_ And then there was that: the grating and panicked voice rocked the already shaky as fuck boat knocking her confidence down like it was a house of cards. _What if she just tosses it to the side or what if you just wasted thirty dollars on something she doesn’t even like, you fucking moron?_ Adora hating the notebook might be a worse hit than her just turning Catra down. The small downturn of her lip, the broken eye contact, the struggled thank you of her disappointment, it was all Catra saw when she closed her eyes. Good fucking thing she wasn’t sleeping before!

“Oh, I  _ love  _ Panda Express!” Entrapta was clapping her hands, but the sound was far away. Catra ran a nail down the cover of sketchbook, idly staring at the notebook next to it. Is this how Adora felt all the fucking time? Wasting precious energy running through hundreds of shitty scenarios in the hopes of saving her skin?  _ How the fuck does she just live like that? _

And was there any way Catra could make it easier for her?

Scorpia’s excited response shattered the warmth that spread through Catra at the thought of being the one to  _ heal  _ and not just inflict careless hurt, “Oooh! I have leftovers, want some? We can watch Jeopardy, too!”

Catra caught a glimpse of herself scowling in the window above her bed at Scorpia’s declaration. So much for “I want to make sure you get some sleep tonight, Catra.” But like hell was Catra going to say anything, was a win for them both. Scorpia and Entrapta eating crappy mall food and watching TV reruns was the equivalent of normal parents binging CSI: Miami; Catra was free to do whatever the fuck she wanted now and she didn’t even have to be inconscipicious now.

Gnawing on her lip, Catra flipped her sketchbook open and skimmed for the right page. Most of the pages, dedicated to She Ra illustrations, had been carefully ripped out and were now living in sheet protectors in one of Adora’s billions of binders. One of them had stayed.

For a simple pencil sketch, the drawing evoked a fuck ton of confusing feelings in Catra. The drawing of Adora that the subject tackled her to the dirt to see, Catra’s suffocating feelings for her- and migraine- be damned. The drawing Catra had been glaring daggers at while  _ “satisfaction brought it back”  _ rang in her head, and she understood in that moment that every word out of Hordak’s mouth had been a lie and it would  _ always  _ be- but Adora was just stupid enough to speak truth. Catra didn’t think about what she did next, she just did what she did best. She acted on the insane impulse possessing her shaking hands and tore the drawing from her sketchbook. Fuck it if Adora didn’t like the notebook, Catra thought with a smile on her face as she folded up the smooth paper, she would like this.

As Catra took a surgeon’s care to tucking the drawing into the pages of the new notebook, her phone vibrated against her thigh and made her jump three inches in the hair, sending all her hair standing on edge. Oh right, she’d been texting Adora. Catra tossed the notebook to the other side of the bed, the voice of the Jeopardy host on full blast covering the  _ whack!  _ it landed with and unlocked her phone, rocking on the balls of her feet.

_ adora 9:54 pm _

   Hey so this is going to sound weird, but I changed a scene a couple weeks ago.

“Huh?” Catra raised an eyebrow. Nothing major had been added to the She Ra document in six days. The Google Doc was always open on her phone (okay so yeah, she went back and read She Ra between passengers, fucking sue her), so she would know if Adora changed a  _ whole  _ freaking scene. Another thought hit her like a deck to the jaw.  _ Why  _ wouldn’t Adora talk to her about that as she was doing it? Wasn’t that what their little not dates were for? Catra forced her hurt down to her stomach, trying to focus on sending a text back and not spiraling right back to the idea she was stuck, yet again, in some sick mind game orchestrated by another person she loved.

_ Catra’s cell 9:56 pm _

what scene? im confused

_adora_ _9:56 pm_

Chapter 8

“Fuck!” Catra threw a hand over her mouth.  _ She changed ALL of chapter eight? Jesus Christ!  _ Before Catra could type out her what-the-actual-fuck-sentiment, her phone buzzed again.

_ adora 9:56 pm _

__ I didn’t really dig having another diplomatic mission after Dryl even with Mystacore between them, so I changed it...

_ Catra’s cell 9:57 pm _

__ to what??????

holy shit adora

you better not have changed book catra kidnapping book rainbow and sparkles!!!!!!!!

Adora sent back an annoyed emoji and Catra threw her head back despite pain bleeding into her shoulders.  _ I can’t believe I’m about to ask a woman who uses emoji every other text out for a drink! _

_ adora 9:58 pm _

__ Let me just share the document with you.

“Uh, okay…” Catra muttered to herself, digging her nails into her palm. Why the hell would Adora write a chapter in a separate document? Ugh, this whole thing reeked of Adora hiding something and it left Catra wanting to claw her eyeballs out. How  _ dare _ Adora keep her in the dark… even if what she was hiding was probably something monumentally stupid and Catra was  _ definitely _ overreacting to nothing.

That logic still didn’t stop Catra from flinging her phone onto the pillow with a grunt, hugging herself and rocking on her heels as she waited for the phone to light her little corner of the apartment.

_ This better be nothing Adora,  _ she thought to herself as her stiletto nails dug into her skin,  _ or I’m going to fucking kill you. _

A quiet buzz, then finally the bluish light she was waiting for. Despite her anxiety, Catra scrambled to pick it up and brought to her face as soon it was in her hand, forehead wrinkling at the notification that was waiting for her. “What the…”

_ Adora Reign has shared ‘She Ra: Princess of Power Chapter 8- Princess Prom’ with you. _

-

Because she was a giant fucking weanie, Catra hid in her car for twenty minutes after pulling up to The Rebellion, digging the nail of her forefinger into the leather of the steering wheel, willing herself to find one solid ounce of bravery so she could get out of stupid the car, notebook in her backpack, go into the bakery and ask Adora out. Easy right? “ _ How  _ am I so bad at this?” her own voice echoed off the car interior and back to her, mocking her with her own pathetic words.

Okay, this whole paralyzed by fear was getting fucking ridiculous and it was  _ so  _ not her style. Yeah maybe when she was dealing with the haunting and persisting memories of her abusers, but  _ not _ when it came to women. It wasn’t like Catra was going to walk in there and straight up propose to Adora. This wasn’t some casual hang with all her chic friends either; she and Adora were still working on She Ra so that gave Catra about an hour, maybe two for a buffer. Talking about the book was a wanted distraction at this point; that is, if she ever went inside. Once she got  _ out  _ of the fucking car and stopped staring at Adora’s blurry figure through the bakery’s window. But that was so much fucking easier! Watching Adora strut around in yoga pants and a tank top- a outfit  _ much  _ more suited to her even if those suits made her look so fucking hot- laughing with her friends and dancing to whatever terrible music Rainbow was playing both calmed and aggravated Catra’s nerves. And this wasn’t the first time Catra just chose to stare like some lower east side creep either; that night Adora asked her to come onto her project as an illustrator, Catra wasted five minutes just watching her, lost in her own little world, sitting on that bench before honking her horn and scaring the shit out of her.

_That was so fucking worth it,_ Catra’s reflection bore back at her, this time bearing a wicked smile, only to disappear as fast as it appeared. Her glee disintegrated as she saw Adora stop in her tracks and pull out her phone, that painful expression of worry on her face that was like a kick in Catra’s heart, as she looked up and out the window. For Catra. _Shit!_ She punched her leg. Damn Adora’s anxiety and worry and the way she cared about her. Now she was gonna have to get out of this stupid car and stop Adora from flat out calling 9-1-1.

“Shoulda brought Scorpia for back up,” mumbled Catra, grabbing her bag from the passenger seat and throwing her door open. The other woman had offered and offered and offered (mostly because she wanted to meet Adora and her “crew,” Catra suspected) until Catra whacked her in the forehead a bottle of shampoo to chase her out of the bathroom, because  _ nooo,  _ Catra was a badass and didn’t need help from  _ anyone.  _ And like always, that attitude had come back to bite her in the ass, ‘cause now she was walking into the bakery  _ alone _ with a notebook that made her bag weigh heavy with her fears.

_ I can do this, I can do this, who the hell am I kidding I canNOT do this, I need to get out of here- _

“Catra! What a surprise!” a familiar robust voice called out as she pushed the door open, almost back tracked and got stuck with one foot in the door. Letting out a long sigh, Catra accepted her fate. No point in turning around now. They’d seen her.  _ Fuck me. _

“Sup, Sea Hawk.” The Jack Sparrow Wannabe was sitting at table parallel from the door with Mermista at his side on a heated phone call. _Looks like I’m not the only one bringing my dumb personal life here. Speaking of which-_ Catra glared at the room, _why the hell are they all here?_  Glimmer and Bow, yeah, they’d be here, they _worked_ here, but Frosta reading fucking Shakespeare at a table where Perfuma sat taking pictures of her chai latte on her phone? Oh come on! Seriously, did these people have nowhere else to go? No yachts or blimps or parties at Drake’s flat or whatever? (What? Like she had any fucking clue what rich people did!)

_ Wait, where’s Adora?  _ Catra held back a snort.  _ She’s not actually calling 9-1-1, is she?  _ Catra tried to step forward, intent on finding wherever or whatever mess the authoress had spun herself into, only for her goal to be interrupted by The Rebellion’s most loyal patrons. Ugh, this night was already so fucking hard, why did the world demand she have to socialize on top of everything?

“Why, I’m so glad you could join us-” Sea Hawk stopped just as quickly as he started, gasping just loud and just dramatic enough to startle  _ everyone,  _ “You are wearing the bracelet I made you!”

Catra glanced down at her hand. “Um, yeah?”

“See Mermista, I told you she would wear it! Ha,  _ you  _ said she would bite my face off-” Catra rolled her eyes, her head falling back. Okay, so it looked like Adora wasn’t freaking out, not with Bow and Glimmer coming around the counter conversing oh so casual; Catra could take a deep breath, right? It’s not like Catra had anything to lose by befriending these rich losers- friends of The Rebellion and also Adora’s rag tag found family.  _ Nut up or shut up, Catra. Time to be better.  _ “yet here she is, wearing it!”

“Yeah I see that Sea Hawk,” droned Mermista, twirling a strand of blue and  _ still _ cradling her cell phone behind her ear.  _ Wow. _

“What a sweet victory this is-”

“Dude, she’s on the phone. Give it a rest,” smirked Catra as she walked by, reveling in the relief of his girlfriend’s face when he shut up immediately.  _ Two down, four to go. Ha, this shit is easy. _

“Catra!” Perfuma called out as she strolled by the table. “Welcome back! How are you, tell me everything!” Catra’s eyebrows flew up. Everything? From what, the last week and half?

Right as Catra was going to bullshit some answer, Frosta threw her copy of _Macbeth_ down on the table with a _whump!_ and whirled around in her chair with the excitement of a small rabid dog. “Catra, I’m gonna need you to redo my tattoo!”

“What?” the fuck?

“Everyone in my Game Theory class  _ loved  _ it okay? And they thought I had a  _ real  _ tattoo,” the little gremlin looked up at her with wide brown eyes that were almost watering.  _ Is she trying to turn herself into a puppy?  _ “But they said it was the coolest tattoo they’d ever seen and they thought  _ I  _ was cool and they all hate me cause I’m the youngest and all the professors favor me ‘cause of my family, but then it washed off in the shower a couple days later!”

“Yeah ‘cause it was ballpoint pen.” Catra deadpanned. Wait, a bunch of egotistic narcs she went to college with liked her design? Shit it only took her like five minutes! Also, how were these kids not smart enough to also notice it was done in pen and not real ink? That sad reality alone made Catra feel for Frosta for a solid minute; this was a city full of rich idiots that would hate you for fucking nothing, so it looks like she had something in common with the little gremlin puppy.

“My washed off too, unfortunately, but before it did my customers that saw absolutely adored it!” Perfuma squealed so loud Catra jumped back a solid foot, all her muscles freezing up. “Have you ever thought about creating an Instagram for your designs? Adora says you don’t have you one. Personally, I’d love to keep up with your work. I’m sure you’d have like a hundred followers overnight!” She waved her hand with jollity. Catra almost snorted. There was nothing more Bright Moon than having an  _ instagram  _ dedicated to a hobby.

Frosta nodded, “An instagram  _ would  _ get you lots of traffic but if you want to  _ make  _ money then you should get a Patreon. That way you can get commissions and stuff. Some of the people I play D&D with do that. Adora’s says you’re doing art for She Ra and says you’re like the best artist ever, but  _ I  _ still think you should be a real tattoo artist, person, whatever they’re called I don’t really know...”

_ Wait you think I should what? Wait Adora said what?  _ Catra slipped her hands in her back pockets, trying to keep up the cool facade. First Adora has the audacity to say things like that to her face, now she’s saying them to her friends? And now they were  _ complimenting  _ her designs and telling her things like she should get an Instagram or whatever the fuck a Patreon was? Oh, Catra was going to get Adora back for this. Someday, somehow. For now she just stood there and tilted her head trying to act like she was deep in thought, face hot enough to combust. Catra forced herself not to smile-  _ don’t smile, don’t fucking smile!!-  _ and just continue to stare at the two rich girls with practiced boredom.

“Frosta, you’re- you’re coming on a little strong.” Perfuma gulped, nudging Frosta hard enough to knock out her chair. Catra could tell it was meant to be subtle, but she had a feeling as mean spirited laughter spilled from her lips that nothing the Silver Spoon Posse did was ever subtle. God, it was  _ almost  _ entertaining.

“Ow- Perfuma, that hurt!” Frosta yelped, Catra cackling as she shoved Perfuma back just as hard, “This is how  _ business  _ is done, Perfuma!” Again she turned around and turned on the begging, “Catra, will you  _ please  _ redo my tattoo? I have class tomorrow and everyone will know I was totally lying! Please,  _ please, please! _ ”

Rolling one of her curls in her hand, Catra ran her teeth over her incisors and gazed at her fingernails, “You know, it’s a lot harder to say no when you’re looking at the PayPal app and not Shakespeare, Frosty the Snowman.”

“Done!” She didn’t flinch. But Perfuma did, multiple fucking times, as Frosta launched her tiny body over hers to get to her bag seated across the table to try and wrestle out her phone while Perfuma struggled underneath her. The sight had Catra bursting out into belly laughter. Oh, she was definitely entertained now! “How much do you want, one hundred? Two hundred? I can go higher if you want-”

“Hey! Put your phone back in your bag Frosta, you still have that paper for Advanced Microeconomics! As for you Catra-”  _ Ugh, Glitter _ . Looks like their transaction was interrupted by Adora’s roommate yanking Catra away from the table by the elbow with major rude intention. Jesus, she was a  _ lot  _ stronger than Catra gave her credit for. Catra ripped her arm back growling, having half the mind to fucking kick her in the shin and see how much she liked it.  _ Did she seriously just touch me? Oh it is on-  _ “Who said you could solicit my customers?”

“Oh please,” scoffed Catra, a smile on her face just to toy with her. “I doubt the peanut gallery paying for my next meal ticket is seriously going to make a dent in their trust funds, so I wouldn’t worry. How’s your oven, by the way?”

Hissing like a pissed tea kettle, Glimmer crossed her arms and huffed, “It’s working, so you can tell  _ Entrapta  _ thank you. If that’s not too much for you, Catra.”  _ Wow, what the hell is her deal tonight?  _ “You’re late,  _ by the way.  _ You told Adora you’d be here at 7:00 pm and it’s now 7:21!”

“Is that- is that seriously why you’re mad at me?” Catra pulled back and Glimmer gave a curt nod. A strange uncomfortable feeling spread through her chest at the baker’s words, but it was far from unfamiliar. Shame, it was shame. Was Catra so stupid enough to believe that Adora’s new friends didn’t care about her? That they’d just be cool with anyone who even thought about hurting Adora? Adora wrote what she knew and she knew some fierce protectors. But Catra had been her  _ first  _ fierce protector; when they were little, anyone- well, besides Mrs. Weaver- who dared even look at her wrong walked away with scratches and blood running down their faces. Guess Catra had found herself back in the pattern where she just assumed no one cared about Adora like she did. Guess things were different this time around.

“Yes! ‘Cause everytime something like this happens I never hear the end of a stupid problem that has a  _ very  _ simple solution!” Glimmer threw her hands up like this “problem” was the worst inconvenience she could experience in one lifetime. What the hell was she even talking about anyway? Adora talking to her about Catra? Or maybe Adora talking to her about how tired and overworked she was ‘cause she sacrificed her basic needs for everyone’s happiness? That was  _ sooo  _ distressing? Whatever, she owed Adora regardless.

“Adora’s in the back office, past the bathroom,” Glimmer pointed down the hall before slapping her hands on her apron leaving white powdered prints. Before Catra could get a joke out about that (whatever it was low hanging fruit anyway) Glimmer rolled her eyes and said, “ _ I  _ have to get back to work before Catradora ruins my whole business.”

Without bothering to elaborate she stormed off, leaving a bewildered Catra standing there, her eye twitching. “What the  _ fuck? _ ”

_

“Okay, so got those two scanned which leaves one, two...okay, four more. Ugh, this is taking forever. Work you  _ stupid  _ printer!” 

_Looks like she’s having fun._ Catra heard Adora before she saw her, because all of the lower east side could hear her yelling. The closer she crept through the back of the bakery to Glimmer’s office, the more apparent- and louder- Adora’s frustration with whatever printer she was making vocal demands of became. Shifting her bag on her shoulder and trying to ignore the extremely obvious knocking around of the notebook, Catra leaned up against the door frame and took a deep breath. _Calm down idiot, it’s not that big of a deal._ She curled her hand up into a fist, letting the sting of her nails in her palms distract her from that snide asshole voice. Gee, wonder why those kinds of thoughts didn’t make her feel any better.

“Why won’t you listen to me?” Punching a repeated series of buttons on what looked like a pretty cheap printer and cursing under her breath, Catra’s entrance was completely lost on a preoccupied Adora. And that, sure as hell, was okay with Catra. Besides, it’s not like she could resist seeing her jump once she did realize someone was standing there. This way Catra could be a complete and total chicken in the doorway _and_ enjoy the view.

Gone were the fancy ass suits and the heels, finally.  _ Good fucking riddance,  _ Catra thought to herself, gnawing on the tip of one of her stilettos,  _ why would you hide this from me, Adora? Thought we were closer than that.  _ Now before her in standard Nike workout attire and sneakers, the distinguished muscles of her arms and shoulders shone in the white fluorescent light like they were carved from fucking marble.  _ Princess of Power? More like Princess of Biceps I want to choke me. _ Just staring at the definition of muscles peaking past her tank top and sports bra had a treacherous warmth spreading through Catra’s stomach bleeding deeper, deeper, deeper…

_WHACK!_ Adora brought her fist down on the top of the printer and Catra jumped, head meeting the cold metal of the door frame. Shit, was she that far gone? Damn Adora and her seriously toned, amazing ass. Everything about her just had to be fucking perfect and beautiful and so out of Catra’s league didn’t it?

“First rule of temping in Bright Moon, Princess,” When Catra finally spoke, she found her voice all sultry and low (how the fuck was she supposed to feel about that?) as Adora whipped around at the sound, catching herself on those super woman arms of hers, “try not to break the equipment. It’s worth more than your salary.”

“Catra,” she panted. Catra’s stomach did a backflip when Adora dared to smile at her.

“Hey Adora.” Catra dropped her bag onto one of the office chairs and strolled forward. Stepping to the side, always one move ahead in their flirtation of cat and mouse, Adora put her hands on her hips and Catra not to stare.

“How nice of you to  _ finally _ show up. I was worried about you, you know.”  _ I wish you weren’t. That would make this  _ so  _ much easier.  _ “I’ve been scanning your drawings for twenty minutes by  _ myself  _ and also I’ve got that Boots with the Fur song- I can’t remember the title, but Bow and Glimmer were singing it earlier in the kitchen and they got it stuck in my head. So I  _ really  _ could’ve used your annoying voice to distract me.” Adora was practically singing by the end of her sentence, winking at her as a cherry on top.  _ Stop being so fucking cute,  _ Catra grunted and rolled her eyes.

“Har, har Adora. I didn’t think I was gonna be late, okay.”  _ Or practically in love with you and all the ways you can break me with your fucking goddess muscles. _ “It’s just dumb Marshmallow’s car is having problems and the car didn’t start for a while when I left the apartment.” Lie. Big fucking lie. The dumb car was fine, but better to play with her pretty little head than to admit the car was fine and that she actually had been freaking out/staring like a weirdo for upwards of fifteen minutes. Better a white lie than the embarrassing and painful truth:  _ I can’t fucking stop thinking about you. And I’m so, so afraid that what I’m about to do is gonna make you hate me and that I’ll lose you. Again. _

Adora straightened up from the printer so fast her ponytail practically hit Catra in the face. “What? Why- why is your car having problems you said Marshmallow just had an inspection? Are you  _ sure  _ everything is okay?”

“Duh, I’m here,” Catra winked back once Adora’s breathless rant ended, but her words did  _ not  _ make things better. Adora’s gaze fell back to the printer, a ghost of a frown on her face as she twisted a finger in the bottom fabric of her tank top. Catra could have  _ kicked  _ herself. How could she be so fucking stupid all of the time? Marshmallow’s latest inspection had totally slipped her mind. Apparently one look at Adora’s body and all her brain cells were wiped out. She couldn’t even come up with a solid lie anymore. “Adora, everything is  _ fine _ . I swear! You know Marshmallow, total cheap ass.” Another giant effing lie. “He’s spends too much money on his wigs and glitter and margaritas for all the other performers that he has to take the car to sketchy mechanics. He’s even worse with money than me, Princess. I can have Entrapta look at it.”

Adora’s expression relaxed and she crossed her arms, her smile crooked in an absolutely fucking gorgeous way. “Just don’t let her steal parts, okay?”

“Ugh don’t remind me,” Catra snorted, her own heart beat steadying as she came to stand by Adora. “Pretty sure my bed frame is just a fucking skeleton at this point. One day it’s gonna break while I’m sleeping and then it’s bye-bye Entrapta.”

“Yeah, if the fall doesn’t kill you. Or  _ she  _ doesn’t kill you in your sleep so she can study sarcasm postmortem or something,” laughed Adora, that beautiful playful look dancing in her eyes that drew Catra in like a lamb to the slaughter.  _ Fuck, she’s beautiful. This is so not fair! _ Catra, heart pumping so fast it was going to burst, whacked her the shoulder and tried- then failed- to hold back her own giggling as Adora practically howled.

“You are definitely not as funny as you think you are.” Lie. Big fucking lie.

Rolling her bright ocean eyes and shrugging, Adora lifted the lid of the printer to reveal an illuminated glass platform where a familiar piece of paper lay face down before shutting it and hitting the same button she’d been whacking the shit out of before. “Who said I was joking? I genuinely think you should be afraid of all the ways Entrapa could use you to win a Nobel Prize, Catra,” she giggled, her shoulders rolling up as she laughed. Their eyes met for a second and that feeling- the one where the Mustang broke fifty miles an hour on that Arizona highway- hit Catra like the car itself. Except it didn’t last. (Damn it, when would it ever?) One second they were vibing at one hundred, next Adora grimaced with a whine and smacked the side of the printer. “Useless piece of junk! Just do your job!  _ Please!” _

“This sounds familiar.” Catra nudged Adora, practically leaning into the perfect shape of her. What? She couldn’t help herself! Catra was drawn to Adora and was always in need of physical contact just to hold her over to the next sorry ass attempt to get her attention. God, she really was whipped by a dork who couldn’t even work a printer.

“First of all,” Adora said with a nudge back, their hips bumping, “that was a  _ copier _ . Second of all, it’s not my fault every piece of machinery designed for paper  _ hates  _ me! Also I can’t believe you remember that, that’s not embarrassing for me at all.”

_ I remember everything, Princess. _

“She Ra, Princess of Power, defeated by shitty office equipment. Now  _ that’s  _ a twist.” Catra leaned her head over Adora’s shoulder.  _ It’s just to see the damn thing,  _ she justified in her head. _ This has nothing to do with her perfect skin or the fact that she feels like home, damn it! Why- why isn’t she pushing me away?  _ Catra cocked her head to take in Adora. Her expression was steady, her face flushed from what, heat? Or was she enjoying this- ‘cause she was  _ not _ moving. Yeah, Catra had her hand on the table to keep her balance and had practically all of her body weight against Adora- and was enjoying  _ every fucking second  _ despite the impossible desire to hate it, to hate her- but Adora had brought her down before, sober  _ and _ drunk _.  _ If Adora didn’t want Catra to be there, she wouldn’t be. For a few infinite seconds the two of them stared at a blinking red light on the printer- or glared, in Adora’s case- and Catra soaked in her warmth, trying not to suffocate on the sweet combination of vanilla and sweat. But Catra couldn’t give a flying fuck if she died this way. “Hey, what if I tried?” asked Catra, trying to fight the impulse to play with her ponytail. It was  _ right  _ there, for fuck’s sake.

Adora wiggled against the pin she trapped her in as a devious smile bloomed on her face. Someone smelled competition. Someone just couldn’t resist. “Be my guest, Catra.”

“Move then.” Probably ‘cause she was on the verge of doing something so incredibly beyond stupid, something she’d not only regret for the rest of fucking time but also  _ destroy  _ her chances with Adora like put her hand on the small of her back like they were already a thing, or worse- run her tongue up her neck just to see her squirm- Catra acted on that mean, impulsive reflex and bumped Adora’s hip, throwing her to the side.

“Fuck, Catra!” she yelped as her leg hit one of the chair armbands. Catra ran her tongue over her teeth. Oh the Princess could curse, could she? Fuck, that was hot. Maybe Catra could tease that side out of her more often...

“What button it is? Or did you break it, She  _ Hulk _ ?”

Scoffing, Adora limped back over. “The red one, genius, the one that says  _ scan  _ Catra.”  _ Click!  _ “But it doesn’t matter, it’s not gonna work. that thing is a piece of junk and Glimmer won’t let me or Bow ask Angella for a new one-”

Too busy wrapped up in her assured rant, Adora almost missed the beginning whirs of the printer firing up and the blue fluctuating light it started to emit, but Catra didn’t miss her face when realized it was working. No, she savored it. “Oh my God.” Adora dead panned, rolling her eyes so far back in her head it was like Catra was looking in a mirror. “Of  _ course _ it works for you!”

“Duh. Ha, I’m better than you at  _ both  _ your jobs! Suck it, Adora! But seriously, we’d be fucked if I didn’t get this thing working, so you should thank me, Princess.” Catra started. Enjoying the confused look on Adora’s face, Catra reached down and dug at her sketchbook, her heart stopping as her fingers graced the top of the notebook.  _ Not the time, dumb notebook! _

“What do you mean, I had almost all of them scanned and uploaded to my computer. Most of them are in the document. With this one we were practically done-”

Catra cut her off, dropping her sketchbook on the printer with purposeful flare, and turning to her with a smirk. “Yeah, maybe we would’ve been done but then  _ somebody  _ had to rewrite an entire chapter and throw our timeline off the fucking shits.”

Adora’s porcelain cheeks bled scarlet and she leaned back on the table. “So you read it? That - that was fast.” Could she try and sound more breathless? It was making Catra’s skin crawl in the worst- and best- damn way.

_ Of fucking course I read it!  _ You  _ wrote it! I’d read a menu if you wrote it! Hell, I’d actually read terms and conditions if you wrote it, Adora!   _

“Wow, you’re adorably stupid.” Adora narrowed her eyes.

“Ugh, of course I read it! I read it like forty times!” Again, Catra bumped her hip and pushed her to the side (this game was fun) and flipped open now barebone sketchbook. Adora’s soft smile lingered in her periphery. “ _ Because,  _ I needed to do my fucking job.” Lie. But who cared? “Ta- dah.” She waved her hand in a flourish as she whipped the pages away until the drawing she was searching for appeared. Leaning her head on her hand, Catra flashed Adora a toothy smile.

The way Adora’s jaw dropped was so incredibly satisfying that Catra wished she could take a picture. That way she could see herself realizing how it feels to see fictionalized versions of them screwing with each other at prom and just how fucking  _ wild  _ just the idea of that was!

Dancing with Adora… what a wild, out of reach idea.

Catra didn’t get a solid second of sleep the night Adora sent her the Princess Prom chapter. Instead of closing and resting, Catra’s eyes stayed glued to her phone as she read Adora’s writing over and over and over and over. Read it again after Scorpia’s caffeine high  _ finally _ wore off and she turned off the TV. Read it again after Scorpia went to bed and Entrapta went into the kitchen to make a tiny space heater for her rat assembled from “scrap” material from around the apartment complex. Read it until Book Glimmer’s irritating complaints about Book Bow trading her out for Book Perfuma and Frosta’s proclamation that “Princess” Adora’s invitation was to be revoked was all she could hear in her head. Read it until she had memorized the passage where Book Catra took Book Adora as her dance partner- so she could distract her from the actions of Book Scorpia as well as Kyle and Lonnie (ugh, she still couldn’t believe they were in She Ra) of course- and then  _ fucking dipped  _ her in the middle of the waltz. She read it until her eyes ached like her bitch of a head because there had to be  _ some  _ reason, some motivation that pushed Adora into making a narrative choice that  _ screamed  _ romanticism. Catra could find it- wherever it was hiding in plain sight- before morning, right?

No, because the universe just hated her that fucking much. By the time Catra had read the chapter until she couldn’t physically stand it anymore, it was only 4:30 in the morning, or so Catra assumed because Entrapta announced every thirty minute interval into recorder. If things were normal, which they sure as fuck had not been since Adora came back into her life- usually around four was the time Catra’s exhaustion beat out her stubbornness and she’d curl up on her pillow. Oh, she did try, only that night it didn’t take. Thanks to Princess Prom no amount of tossing and turning in her comforter shut up the hazardous She Likes Me, She Likes Me Not thoughts! So, in a fit of desperation, Catra threw off her blanket and traded shitty sleep for charcoal coating her hands and eraser flakes trapped in her curls. Until she passed out around six in the morning, Catra tore through her sketchbook mapping out different interactions through the ball. Book Catra talking to Book Scorpia in her Force Captain Quarters. Book Adora mapping out a battle plan for the prom. Book Bow and Perfuma exchanging corsages. Book Glimmer sticking a decorative pin that would let her save her ass in Book Adora’s hair, Book Entrapta hanging on an ice post and observing guests, Book Scorpia and Catra entering Frosta’s castle. A useless waste of illustrations that wouldn’t make it to the final draft and were soley to help Catra sort out/ignore her cluster fuck of thoughts.

Her hand had steadied by the time she began sketching out Book Adora trying to convince Frosta not let Scorpia and Catra stay the rest of the night, but her busy thoughts had not. God damnit! She just couldn’t figure it out! Was Adora playing some sort of twisted game and she wanted an outcome where Catra beat herself into a fucking frenzy? Or was this just a chapter in a book? Knowing Adora, the latter made a shit ton more sense.  _ But then why the hell would she keep it a secret? _

Adora, as dumb and oblivious as she could be, never sought out to be cruel. Oh, there had been plenty of times in their lives where her actions had resulted in immeasurable pain for Catra and she’d echoed her regret one too many meltdowns, but Catra thought she was past lumping her old-enemy-turned-new-friend with her abusers of the past. The problem that remained was that Hordak used to keep secrets from her. So did Mrs. Weaver. And they used the information she didn’t have as a blunt instrument to bludgeon her self worth with, over and over and over. A chapter about a fantasy prom in a young adult novel about magic princesses had not the weight of secrets about Catra’s parentage but her unkempt and unpracticed emotional reasoning couldn’t gauge that! It all felt the same: like a sharpened knife in her back.

Catra’s hands began to trace the lines of Book Adora in the dance. She’d been described as wearing a bright red gown, simpler than the frivolous ornamentation of representatives from other kingdoms, yet elegant and chaste. Had Catra seen Adora ever dressed in red since the first Uber ride? No, just those crimpy suits and lesbian sword racerback. Shame.  _ Adora would probably be so fucking hot in red. _

_ Adora never picked a love interest, did she?  _ Catra thought to herself as she began her own body- but in her hybrid cat form that admittedly came just a little too easy to Catra’s hand- and fill in the details of the suit she was described.  _ She didn’t put  _ me _ in a dress… well at least she knows I’d claw her ponytail out if she put me in a prom dress, shudder. _ Everyone in the first dance scene had danced with multiple people; it was one of those  _ fancy _ dances where people exchanged partners and Adora took advantage of the form to advance the plot (sneaky little genius). But Book Adora had  _ started  _ with Book Catra because Catra held out her hand. Book Adora had taken it, begrudgingly. And that right there, the fact that they had not only danced their way into a fight but that Adora detailed her self-insert’s conflicted emotions, her racing heartbeat, sweaty hands ( _ Gross, Princess)  _ and strange exhilaration so unlike that of battle _ ,  _ made Catra believe that this whole friends to enemies to lovers vibe was  _ not _ all in her head.

The more the drawing took shape and form, the more Catra abandoned the idea that Adora was fucking with her, because that notion seemed even more out of place than the possibility Adora did what she did- hiding the damn chapter- out of embarrassment. Catra wasn’t  _ that  _ stupid and neither was the author herself. So there was no way any of that- the dance, the spin, the dip, the self described  _ jealousy _ \- was an accident. Entrapta captured vocal proof on that dumb recorder of hers that Adora’s feelings might not be as platonic as Catra interpreted them to be and now Adora had written this chapter and this scene woven with borderline homoerotic hatred and the remnants of a shattered love; those two things couldn’t be a coincidence! Or Catra was going crazy for real this time. Book Adora grabbing Book Catra by the waist  _ instead of  _ the hand when it would have been so much easier couldn’t be a coincidence.

Tossing her pencil aside, Catra just stared at her finished drawing of her Adora’s fictional likeness with her hands in her own and a knee between her legs, and dug her incisors into the skin of her lip.  _ Adora can’t like me! Not like I like her… ugh, here we go with like again. What am I, a fucking fourth grader with a “crush” on Adora? Oh yeah I did have a crush on her, Jesus Christ. There’s no way Adora felt that way about me then-or now! Okay, but her fantasies include us dancing and rolling around with each other on some icy dance floor...fuck! _

Catra didn’t bet- fuck no, she was already destitute- but if someone held a gun to her head and forced her to say whether or not she believed Adora reciprocated her feelings… she would, okay, she would! Adora probably felt the same way about her based on all the blushing and the stolen touches and Entrapta’s recording and now lacing her feelings through Princess Prom. And that, the realization that Adora wanted her all warning signs be damned, should have helped Catra go forward with her plan to ask her to get a drink with her yet here Catra was, lips bleeding and fingers tracing grey, asking a drawing “Uh, if you like me so damn much why don’t  _ you  _ ask me out, dummy?”

Now at her friend’s bakery, leaning on a whirring printer and watching Adora’s eyes take in her artwork, Catra wondered that again. Adora always had been kind of a chicken in a way; she scared way too easy and no was not in her vocabulary, but also fuck that reasoning! If Catra knew  _ anything _ about Adora it was that if that woman wanted something, almost nothing- except apparently late nights, early mornings, and a shitty boss- kept her from it. Catra was the one who hid in the shadows, let all her dreams pass her, brooding as she waited for the world to either kill her or end. While Adora worked every spare minute on her dream to get a fucking book published, Catra’s only step forward was researching tattoo schools in Bright Moon and then getting stuck in a such a massive cloud of bitterness at her own shortcomings- why was she only doing this  _ now-  _ that would have made Hordak say “I told you so, Catra.” It made complete and total sense for Catra to make Adora do it, make her take the first step so she could follow in this dance. Adora got it wrong when she wrote Princess Prom yet here she was next to her, just perfect enough to be out reach, waiting for Catra to prove her right.

“Catra,” Adora began with a soft smile of awe on her face (Catra always thought she would get used to the warmth Adora’s validation invoked in her, but she never did), “this is amazing, I- I’m keeping this one, after we scan it. I think it’s my favorite.”

As she opened the printer to take out the last drawing, Catra took it back from her fingertips, “Uh, who said you get to keep any? These are  _ my  _ works, Princess. And it’s not like you’ve paid me yet.”

“Yeah, but I commissioned the drawings in the first place, Catra!”

“So? I’m proud of this shit too Adora! You’re not the only one who worked her ass off!”  _ I’m proud of this? I’m proud of myself? That’s what this weird gross feeling in my throat is? _

“Ugh, fine. I guess they are yours and all.” Adora gave in much quicker than Catra thought, sending a painful spike of anxiety through her body  _ Why isn’t she fighting me?  _ “I just wanted something to remember you by that’s all.”

_ What? _

At her words, time came to a brutal halt and something in Catra broke. It was like all the oxygen had been instantaneously and violently sucked out of the room, stranding Catra in a vacuum of her own fears brought to life. Ears popping and muscles freezing, Catra’s brain forgot to keep her heart pumping blood and lungs taking air, choosing instead to ignite a kindling of anger that Adora basically poured gasoline all over. All she could do in any physical capacity was stare at Adora until her vision blurred a darkened red.

_ Something to remember you by… Something to remember you by?!?  _ Catra had to swallow the rising impulse to scream in indignation Adora’s declaration back at her. Each word was like the blade of knife cutting unique marks in her skin, destined and determined to leave scars. Words like that only had one meaning; Adora pictured  _ this-  _ what they had- coming to an end when She Ra was finished. Her words and the bounce of her voice rang in Catra’s head, her fingers curling into fists as she fought the urge to smash the printer, break it, throw it, do  _ anything  _ to stall the ending. Stall the car crash and save her skin. Save  _ this _ .

Entrapta was wrong, for once. Adora obviously did not return Catra’s adoration and obviously didn’t  _ want  _ it. And while she might not be smart or cunning or corrupt enough to orchestrate a mind game, this had still been a game to her, something fun and experimental. Something not real and had never been real. Catra had been just fucking stupid enough to fall for her, for her smile and her kindness, for her strength and compassion when it was all some farce, but there was always a catch, this time being that Catra just didn’t deserve to be happy. Worst of all Catra was still standing next to her like it was nothing, daydreaming of destroying, screaming, cursing, yelling, running off, something just cruel and physical enough that would make Adora her punching bag. All she had to do was push the printer off the desk or throw her backpack at her or… or tear the drawings up.

Catra looked at the pile of her work sitting beside the printer. Hours upon hours of grueling physical and emotional labor, a collaboration of sleepless nights and morning catnaps filled with nightmares. Her entrance back to doing what she loved and the first step to healing, the first step to achieving what she had always passed off as some optimistic folly, ‘cause only complete idiots had dreams and goals. What were they to her now except super fucking flammable? Just the wild, chaotic thought of destroying them, ripping them into shreds of nothing right before Adora’s horrified eyes was the emotional equivalent of a knife in her stomach, but it was all that was keeping Catra standing. All that was keeping her from making that terrible, unthinkable decision and poisoning a piece of herself just so that the whole operation would become infected was that she couldn’t fucking move.

Because was it even that big of a deal? For fuck’s sake it was one sentence and now Catra was what, ready to light a building on fire? Jesus fucking Christ! She had come full circle, crawled bleeding back to square one, and found herself in her most comfortable position: as long as the subject of her anger went down with her, what tragedy was it if she went spiraling down right along with them?

Hordak was right. Catra was too fucking emotional. And in her effort to be a better person- well, let it be said she had made no progress.

“-Catra? Catra? Hey, hello?”  _ Huh?  _ All the rush of her emotions were sucked out of her, leaving her lungs as Adora’s voice pierced Catra’s vacuum and with her call the air came back to her. The oxygen Adora brought almost swallowed her whole. She’d been calling her name and trying to talk to her. Of fucking course. Now if only she could take the same care with Catra with her damn words! Catra looked to her left to see that concerned look in now familiar ocean eyes, sending her foaming at the mouth anger into a violent tug of war with her love for the woman standing next to her.

“Huh? What?” snarled Catra, yanking her arm away from Adora’s tight grasp. When-  _ how-  _ did that get there? Adora recoiled, hands falling to her sides, and she took a step back as her eyebrows flew up in apprehension.

“I just- I was asking if you were okay with Princess Prom as a chapter. I know that I changed it at the last minute and I, well I really wasn’t honest with you about writing it.” She placed her hands on her back and rocked on her heels, her ocean eyes looking anywhere but Catra’s split ones. “It was just this… spur of the moment thing and I don’t know, but I should’ve run it by you, but I was nervous you-”

“You’re talking about  _ Princess Prom _ ?” Catra’s words dripped with ire as confusion took hold where anger had been “I thought- duh, I’m okay with Princess Prom! I mean, yeah it was really fucking weird you hid it from me but it’s your book Adora! Obviously you get to make the executive choices.”  _ Like kicking me out of your life. Fuck, why do you get to abandon me again? Why can’t it be the other way around- I was  _ this  _ close to kicking  _ you  _ out, Adora! Who said you could do it first? Why can’t it just be me for once? _

“Oh.” Adora nodded, her gaze falling to the floor.

Catra hugged herself as silence enveloped the conversation. Idly, Adora scuffed the carpet with her shoe.  _ If this is really gonna end,  _ Catra thought, her fingers digging into the leather of her jacket,  _ then I deserve to know everything. I didn’t get it last time and she owes me.  _ “Why did you hide it from me?”

“I-” Adora looked up and their eyes met. She sighed. “It’s complicated, Catra.”

“Yeah, isn’t everything?” she shot back. So much for not sounding hostile. But seriously, it’s complicated? This was not a fucking rom com! Catra deserved a more in depth and effortful answer over such a bullshit one. “I think I can stomach it Princess.”

Adora let out a long sigh before starting, “Look, these past few weeks have been- they’ve been  _ amazing  _ okay? And I- I don’t want this to end.” Again, her gaze fell to the floor. Catra had to keep herself from scoffing. Why did everything have to be so fucking confusing with her? “You know the chapter was, ugh how do I say this right? The chapter was full of moments between you and me and I- you know what screw it, I’m just gonna say it-…” she took a deep breath, “To be honest, Catra, I’m kinda... afraid of pushing you away? This just feels really delicate and-”

“What?” Catra asked softly, standing up straight. This  _ is  _ not where she pictured this going. Every syllable out of Adora’s mouth came flying at her from left field.  _ She  _ was afraid of pushing Catra away?  _ She  _ was not the reckless and unhinged emotional one of the two.  _ She  _ was the strong one...even when she was afraid.

To busy fiddling with her hands, Adora didn’t hear her. “When I wrote that chapter it was like the perfect way for me to work through everything I was feeling! I thought that if I told you what I was doing it would, it would, I dunno spook you?”

“Okay, I’m not  _ actually _ an animal, Adora.” Catra’s words came out harsher than she meant them, but only because she was just unable to play anything other than defense on this bitch of an earth always trying to fucking kill her. But Catra  _ was _ smiling. More and more by the second, wondering if this strange new emotion was hope of all things.

“And I know that!” Her face was so bright and so fucking lovely, even if she looked more visibly nervous than Catra had ever seen her. “But even you have got to admit Catra, you’ve got like one foot on the brake on all times, even though you totally suck at braking.” Catra snorted, dragging a hand down her face. She wasn’t even going to acknowledge that with a response. “Plus, I thought…” Adora drawled off, biting her lip.

“What?”  _ You can’t just look at me like that and trail off, Adora!”  _ Catra put her hand on the chair. It was the only way to steady herself, but knowing that logic made her out to be weak as shit, she told herself the chair would make a good projectile, just in case she didn’t like whatever came out of Adora’s mouth next. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a purple ribbon peeking out of her backpack.

“I thought you were gonna make fun of me for making it prom.”

Adora’s candid response had Catra stoic one second and howling with laughter the next second.  _ That’s  _ why she was embarrassed? Because it was prom? Oh Good Lord that was fucking sweet! As Catra’s laughter crescendoed, Adora’s offended smirk melted off her face and giggles slipped from her lips. Doubling over onto the chair, Catra flipped her head up, curls spilling everywhere and asked between strained breathes, “Seriously, Adora?” Adora  _ tried  _ to answer, started stuttering and guffawing, but with Catra’s laughter the loudest thing in the room, she didn’t get almost anywhere. One catch of Catra’s eyes and her laughter burst free, not before she whacked Catra’s shoulder again.

“You’re the worst, Catra!” Her melodic laughter rang against Catra’s harsh cackling for what felt like forever. Truth was, it wasn’t actually that funny. But the more they giggled against each other’s bodies, against each other’s foreheads, as Catra’s hand came to rest against where Adora was touching her on the shoulder, the more the tension of moments before bled dry. The sensation would die and they’d stop for a few seconds, only to meet each other’s eyes and keel over into each other again.

Catra honestly couldn’t think of the last time she’d laughed so hard the muscles of her gut were about to combust. For someone so batshit crazy emotionally speaking, Catra tended to rotate through every negative known to human beings, leaving positive ones untouched. Scorpia had sometimes made her laugh, whenever she wasn’t trying to force “their special bond” or whatever she called it, and every once in a while when Entrapta fell off whatever she was perched on, but other than that no one could get so much as a dry snicker; Adora, on the other hand, freed up her brain of some her angst just by being the giant dork she was. The way her nose wrinkled up when she snorted, the way her shoulders rolled up, the warmth of her hand bleeding through the sleeve of her leather jacket had Catra’s heart hammering. Catra stole a look up at her face, catching a glimpse of her smile and thought about that one line Adora had written in Princess Prom.

_ Is this what love feels like?  _ Laughing like they did when they were little kids and every single thing was an inside joke. Holding onto each other like separation would kill them both? The feeling, the L word itself, scared Catra shitless but she didn’t really give it much thought. ‘Cause Adora snorted again.

“You fucking snort!” snickered Catra, before keeling over again, held up only by the strength of Adora’s arms.

“Oh yeah?” Adora tried to breathe, “You squeak!”

This time it was Catra’s turn to whack Adora in the shoulder. She dodged- barely- still giggling like they were little girls wrestling again, and Catra caught the end of her arm, yanking her back. Oh, like she was getting away from her now. At this point, Catra’s stomach started to hurt, watery salt on her cheeks met her mouth that hurt from smiling- for once- but she didn’t think it was in her to give a flying fuck. ‘Cause in the winter that was Catra’s corrosive, poisonous anger, Adora’s golden laughter was her summer.  

_ Aren’t you glad you didn’t tear those drawings up?  _ her inner thoughts mocked. Catra’s grip on Adora’s hands tightened like her touch was the lifeline keeping her afloat. Adora said she wanted something to remember Catra by and then had gone ahead to say she didn’t want this- what they had built- to end. ‘ _ Cause she wants you to fight for this. You really think  _ Adora  _ can do it all by herself? Be  _ her  _ knight in shining armor for once! _

“God you suck, Princess.” Catra smiled at her when their laughter finally,  _ finally  _ died down. With oxygen back in her lungs she could form coherent thoughts again. As Adora helped her off the chair, she added, “But you know I really didn’t care about how the whole thing was prom. I mean in concept, prom is lame, but you did an  _ okay  _ job making it not sound like my personal hell. You may have done something creative for once.”

“Whatever.” Adora rolled her eyes and bit her lip, punching Catra on the shoulder once more. The pain barely registered. “C’mon, lets get your drawing scanned and maybe we’ll actually get this thing finished.”

Catra rocked on the heels of her boots, watching as Adora lifted the scanner and placed the drawing of their characters dancing. Her answer about why she had hid the chapter was so cryptic- so Adora- that the reminder of it gnawed at her mind like a kitten with a new toy. What the hell did she mean by working through her feelings? What feelings? The ones Entrapta supposedly recorded her talking about? Catra looked back at her backpack and took a deep breath.  _ Try, Catra, God Damnit! Just be fucking better! _ “So… did you ever pick a love interest? Like the publishers wanted?”

“Uh yeah,” shrugged Adora as she turned around, “I mean, I did have someone in mind.”

“Are you gonna tell me about that? Or are you gonna hide that from me too?” Catra took a step forward to where she was leaning on the table. A smirk on her face marked a challenge. Ocean eyes did not break the gaze of split blue and gold ones. It was like they were both terrified to breathe, let alone make a move in a room they’d created an atmosphere only a storm would love.

As the whir of the printer started up again (huh, so now the dumb thing worked for her?) Adora met her challenge of a smile with a striking one of her own, “Depends. Are you gonna make fun of me?”

“Probably,” snorted Catra. She lay her hand down on the printer, not thinking, letting her fingers slide up up to where Adora had set her own hand down. The sharpened point of nail on her middle finger bumped the pad of Adora’s ring finger. Adora didn’t shudder at the touch, didn’t recoil. Didn’t run away.  _ Uh, what the hell do you think you’re doing?  _ a voice in Catra’s head shook the mental walls, a voice much different from the confident side of her earlier.  _ I have no fucking clue!  _ she just yelled back. But she was taking the jump, wasn’t she? She was taking her foot off the brake.

Adora grinned at the contact, her face flushed and expression tender. Catra just stared at her in nervous awe, wishing with every damn fiber in her body that she could commit this sight to memory and draw it later because she was just that fucking beautiful. “Hey,” her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Softer than normal. “do you ever think about maybe going for a-”

“Are you guys making out in here?” And just like that, the storm dissipated faster than the moment itself could. A shrill voice from the doorway cut them off out of nowhere and suddenly a blue blob popped into Catra’s vision, sending a shockwave of adrenaline straight to her chest that was strong enough to stop her fucking heart.

“Mother _ fucker _ !”

“Frosta!”

A jump and a bang and like three more curse words later, Catra and Adora stood panting and shaking, looking at the young girl like she had just jumped straight out of a horror movie frame.  _ What the  _ fuck _ is everyone’s deal here? Does interrupting people just come with a six figure inheritance? Is it genetic? Fucking Bright Moon!  _ Was Catra clinging to something? It felt like it, God, but Catra could barely feel. No, as of right now she was just of bunch of freaked out, overworked nerves who was  _ never  _ going to get to ask Adora for a damn drink with all of her dumb friends working overtime to cockblock her! First, Sea Hawk absolutely fucking obliterates the moment they had after Adora’s post flashback meltdown and now Frosta just waltzed in in all her 5’1” glory?

“Frosta you can’t just ask that whenever you walk into a room!” Adora hissed with so much anger Catra would’ve been turned on if she still wasn’t three bad seconds away from a panic attack.

“Tell that to Sea Hawk and Mermista! And Spinnerella and Netossa!  _ And  _ that twink equestrian instructor friend of yours and whatever anti-capitalist he’s dating that week!” Frosta threw her hands up and Catra sent Adora a look. Biting her lip, Adora sent looked back at her an  _ I’ll explain later  _ expression. “I’m just trying to protect myself, Adora! I’m surrounded by a bunch of horny adults who can’t keep it in their pants and any day now, I’m gonna run out of bleach for my eyes?”

“Well you could at least be professional about it? Ever heard of knocking, Frosta?” Adora retorted.

“Professional?” snorted the little gremlin, “You two are holding hands.”

_ Fuck!  _ Catra looked down, only to have the same horror and shock as before her smack her in the face, ‘cause that thing she was clinging to, that was Adora’s hand. They must’ve made a desperate grab for each other when Frosta scared the shit out of both of them with her grand little entrance. Adora looked down at the same time too, her expression mirroring the same level of sheer embarrassment, but for a whole eternal second, neither of them dared to move a muscle.  _ Does she just not want to let go?  _ After what had to be  _ at least  _ fifteen seconds, Adora’s grip loosened and she pulled away. Trying to do the same, Catra drew her hand in, letting the tips of her nails run over her smooth skin. There was an annoying part of her, that unrelenting  _ weak  _ part of her, that wanted Adora to have stood her ground. To have turned to that little brat and asked “what about it?” And then there was another, smaller part of her that wished  _ she  _ would have said something like that. Would’ve been fun to see Adora’s reaction. Or really fucking mortifying.

“Can I use the printer? I need to print something out for my Mandarin homework and Glimmer says if I procrastinate any longer she’ll kick me off the Minecraft server.” Frosta stepped forward and forced them apart. Mandarin homework? What kind of business major was this  _ literal _ trust fund baby?

“Uh, we’re still using it, Killer Frost.” Catra said. The gremlin sent her an unamused frown.

“Can’t you just use the one at the library?” sighed Adora in massive exasperation.

Frosta blew them both off as she went to look at Adora’s computer screen. “Ugh, that place is gross. And I can’t be on campus alone, remember? Bow says if I don’t have a chaperone I can’t go past eight. Also I don’t have a car. Oh, Catra could take me!” she perked up at the suggestion.

“No,” Adora and Catra replied in tandem.

“Fine,  _ Moms,  _ I get it. Catra only cares about  _ you. _ ” Adora caught Catra’s eyes, a longing in her eyes Catra had gotten all too familiar with, before breaking the contact to glare daggers at Frosta. “You know your computer says you’re done, right?”

“Huh?” Adora whirled around, sending Frosta flying into the chair as she bumped her trying to get to the printer. Clacking, Catra then stuck her tongue out at the younger girl.

“Hey!”

“Oh, well I didn’t know we were done. I guess we can go out there and maybe get something to eat while I try and put the new images in the master document?” Folding up her computer in her arms and removing the Princess Prom illustration from under the printer’s hood with own hand, Adora sent Catra a look asking for her opinion.

Catra forced a nonchalant shrug and grabbed her own backpack, strong willing any thoughts about that damn notebook out of her head for once. “Uh, yeah sure. How bad can that be?”

_

Not  _ that  _ fucking bad, surprisingly, considering the first thing that happened once they walked in was Bow strolling up in his little lavender apron to hand Catra a plate of freshly baked cinnamon rolls like he was her new and imposed maternal figure.

“Fucking sweet!” Catra tried not to drool- or show any other signs of vulnerability or softness in front of all these mini CEOs- as she took the plate and asked with snark, “What, is Sparkles feeling better about me?”

“Well she wasn’t, but I talked her down, so don’t worry.” Bow said, patting her back out of  _ nowhere _ . The foreign touch struck the muscles in Catra’s back the wrong way as they seized up and sent a writhe of burning pain throughout her scar. Why was everyone here so hellbent on touching her? So much for trying to get her to like the whole lot of them. “Don’t take it the wrong way. Glimmer can just be really protective, especially with Adora.”

“Yeah,” Catra breathed through jealousy rising in her throat, “I get that.”

Bow’s attempts for friendship- ugh, he was almost as bad as Scorpia- followed Catra and Adora to a table by the window. As Adora combed through the master She Ra document to insert Catra’s illustrations, chewing furiously on the end of a purple pen, Bow just plopped down in the seat next to Catra without even asking if he could, and tried every angle to talk her up while her focus shifted between staring at the woman across from her and eating.

“So Adora mentioned something about you maybe going to school for a tattoo apprenticeship? I have a brother who works at tattoo shop on the Upper West Side. He’s like the only one of us who didn’t major in history, besides me and Ian. He’s also  _ insanely  _ talented, too bad I’m terrified of needles, ha ha.” Bow forced a laugh and Catra glared at him out of the corner of her split eyes. Since when did Rainbow know her “silly little dream” as Hordak would dub it?

A growl in her throat, Catra flicked the frosting that had been dangling off her nail in Adora’s direction. “Oh she told you that, did she? Did she tell the whole world after that?”

“Uh-”

“Catra,  _ relax _ .” Adora sighed as she wiped cinnamon roll frosting off her forehead, “they were just curious about how you got so good at art. I promise I didn’t give them your whole life story.”

The look on Adora’s face promised Catra that she wasn’t lying; what was personal, gut wrenchingly personal, had stayed- and would stay- between them. And Adora  _ did  _ have the right to talk to her friends about her; it’s not like Entrapta or Scorpia let Catra spare any details about  _ her _ . Wanting to prove Adora was only partially off the hook, Catra kicked her under the table. “Son of a bitch!”

“Ha!- Fuck!” Adora’s sneaker hurt like a bitch as she didn’t even hesitate to kick Catra back.

“You two… are interesting.” winced Bow. Catra heard the squeak of his chair on the tile floor when he tried to move and inch or two away from them.

Not daring to break eye contact with Adora, Catra retaliated, “You don’t even know the half of it, Rainbow.”

“Ha, she called you Rainbow!” Somewhere behind them Mermista gave a dry laugh. Apparently her phone call to Daddy Dearest had ended. Finally.

“Well Rainbows aren’t bad,” Bow tried, rubbing his neck. Damn, Catra almost felt a flicker of remorse. Maybe if she wasn’t so pissed at them for invading her space-  _ and  _ for coming between her and Adora  _ constantly- _ then she might have been genuinely apologetic.

“Rainbows are beautiful! They represent peace, love, oh and our community, Bow! And that’s nothing to be ashamed about.” Ugh, this whole place was turning into hipster central. Catra turned her neck to see Perfuma paused in braiding intricate designs into Mermista hair. If it wasn’t supremely dorky, Catra might be impressed. Mermista was just letting it happen to her, brown, bored eyes still glued to her phone.

Perfuma’s comment invited Pirate Boy. “I actually believed Rainbow was your full name, Bow.”

“It’s not.” Bow deflated. He turned to Catra with his nostrils quietly flaring, but all he got in response was a shrug. Wasn’t her fault these people ate pretty privilege and vomited confetti. If that bleeding heart wanted to be her friend so fucking badly, then he wouldn’t run after a little teasing. Catra wasn’t born with a silver spoon sticking out of her mouth like the rest of these chumps, so she sharpened her teeth and tongue into knives. Bow could take her or leave her as she was.

_ I thought you were trying to better?  _ Catra bit down on her tongue.  _ This is  _ better _! Ugh, fine I’ll lay off if you do. _

His bad mood didn’t stick for long. Yeah, Bow gave pouting a try as Frosta stomped her way over to ask Mermista to check her Mandarin homework, but as Catra stuffed the last bit of cinnamon roll into her mouth, he perked up like Book Glimmer after recharging with her runestone.

“Hey, how’s Entrapta? We haven’t heard from her since she fixed the oven.”

“Really?” Catra asked with her mouth full, “She said she was texting one of you.” Actually, what she said was that she had been communicating with one of Adora’s companions at several intervals of the day and the conversation so far was “fascinating.” Before Scorpia and Catra could ask more, in extremely Entrapta fashion she’d gotten distracted and didn’t bother to elaborate. Maybe Catra should try that move with her roommates...

“Who?” Bow’s near perfect eyebrows flew up. Again, Catra shrugged and made a mental note to ask Adora- if she ever got her alone again- to ask why these people bothered her with so many fucking questions!

“Oh, it’s me.” Perfuma piped up quiet as a mouse, all of them except a still concentrating Adora whirling around to look at her.

“Yes, girl!” cheered Mermista, flinging blue, braided hair into Frosta’s face as she whipped around “Get some!”

The florist’s skin erupted into a rashy red just as bashful as Adora's blush and she started stuttering, “Oh no, it’s not like  _ that,  _ heh... We’re just catching up, that’s all!” She clasped her hands together, her shoulders scrunching up as she got a faraway smile on her face. Her words came off as somewhat believable and any normal person would’ve dropped it at that (okay,  _ Catra _ would've dropped it 'cause she  _ barely  _ knew Perfuma), but like anyone in this group was gonna turn down an opportunity to stick their noses in someone else’s business. Bow, flanked by Mermista who full on abandoned Frosta next to her to mispronounce Chinese words all by herself, and a way too eager Sea Hawk continued to pester the poor woman until she was tripping over words and rushed excuses like they were those long, godly legs of hers.

_Oh Jesus is that what_ I _sound like?_ With a grand eye roll none of them paid attention to, Catra turned around only to slump in her chair. _We're just catching up!_ _That's it!_ All she could think about was all the times she’d used _that_ exact excuse with Scorpia. All the time she’d lost by choosing stubborn denial. Behind her, obnoxious chat about Entrapta and Perfuma “catching up” continued at an annoyingly loud volume and she pressed her fingers to her temples. No migraine- _yet._ Catra doubted she could take much more of _this_ and _them_ and the way the universe was fucking taunting her with their dumb little brunch worthy conversation, basically holding up a mirror so she could see her own life, her excuses, her mistakes. A reflection of what a monster she could be. Ugh, this was worse than the time Adora got drunk! Perspective could be an even bigger bitch than karma.

Sighing again, Catra put her chin in her hand and looked across the table, expecting to see Adora still typing at lightspeed having finished another pen. Of course, what she expected wasn’t what she got; instead of furious concentration on her face, furious frustration had taken over and Adora was pulling at her hair.

“Uh, are you okay?” asked Catra. Seeing her like this invoked an even deeper sense of protection than the jealousy that had come within an inch of consuming her alive when Rainbow had to bring up  _ Sparkles-  _ and Catra had enough irrational city to power the whole lower east side and maybe a few of Entrapta’s experiments- a sense of protection and worry that was damn near enough to paralyze her.  _ If those idiots are being too loud than I can make them shut the hell up- _

“It’s fine, Catra-”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“It’s just- ugh! I hate Microsoft Word!” she whined before throwing her head in her hands.  _ Oh.  _ “Everytime I try and put one of your drawings into the document and I try and line it up with the text it throws  _ everything  _ off! If I move the picture I move a whole page of text and then I have to spend a whole ten minutes trying to get it back! Dumb computer. Dumb Word." Adora growled.

Catra snickered as she relaxed. No more obsessive worry about her from out of the fucking blue, since this was just some stupid computer thing and not like a legitimate anxiety attack. And she was cuter than was probably legally allowed when she was frustrated like this, nostrils flaring and baby hairs flying as she tried not to break another piece of technology. "Okay, then let's just do what we did earlier?"

"What? Catra- no! Sit down,  _ I _ can fix this-"

"Sure you can Princess," Catra cut her off with a playful scoff, rising up out of her chair, "but uh, who fixed the printer for you? I forgot…"

Catra swung around the edge, dodging a busy Bow, and making a beeline for Adora’s computer, but Adora just had to play dirty. She shoved the chair beside her out into Catra’s pathway using her knee and sent it colliding into her stomach, giving her just enough time to wrap her arms in a lazy defense against her laptop. “You didn’t  _ fix  _ the printer! That was just- it was an anomaly, Catra. You’re not a technology goddess- stay put!” At this point Catra had reached Adora, laughing as she tried to dodge her wildly kicking foot as she attempted to keep her at a distance.

“You’re being an idiot, Adora!” So, nothing new. “A giant competitive hotheaded idiot!”

“Pfft, I’m not being  _ you! _ And I can figure this out!” she retorted as Catra, in one blinding move, shoved her leg down and threw her torso over Adora’s to see the fucking screen.

“Just let me! I live with Entrapta so I  _ definitely _ know more than you!” argued Catra. Studying the illustration- the one she’d whipped up for The Battle of Brightmoon of Book Glimmer running to where Queen Angella lay beaten and wounded underneath the darkened runestone- and the out of place text, Catra tried as hard as she fucking could to ignore the way Adora was  _ squirming  _ underneath her. Shit, her face- among other things- was burning up as fast as the damn computer. “Stop wiggling, Adora!”

“Give me back my laptop, Catra!”

“Not until you let me help you, dummy! It’s my book too, you know!” she yelled loud enough to send the restaurant into surprised silence. When Catra let those words out she knew there would be no taking them back.  _ Shit. _ The way their eyes met in the split second after was like lightning striking and this close to Adora, Catra could feel her heartbeat itself reverberating through her own skin like thunder. Catra had invited the atmosphere of the storm back in and she did not enjoy how the mental static she created made every hair on her body stand on end.  _ What fucking right does Adora have to do this to me? _

Body going limp, Adora didn’t break eye contact as she replied. “Fine. Try not to mess it up too badly.”

“Ugh, finally.”

“Umph!”

Okay, so maybe the best, most appropriate response wasn’t to sit in Adora’s lap (Catra could practically hear Scorpia screaming  _ “What are you doing? This is  _ not  _ what we talked about wild cat! We talked about wooing her! Romantic styles!” _ ) but Catra couldn’t stay to have Adora’s chest pressed against her anymore lest she do something  _ incredibly  _ fucking stupid. She didn’t know why she believed sitting on her  _ lap  _ was going to make this any better, because this was the opposite of pulling away from her touch, more surrendering to the crushing and almost obsolete desire to be as near to her as was humanly possible. Also, if it had not been established by her unprecedented pattern of asshole-ness, Catra was not a romantic person.  _ Sorry Scorpia!  _ Catra could do anything she wanted under the guise this was all playful and platonic without confronting her suffocating, disastrous motivations and Adora, too busy being squashed, would be none the wiser.

Right?

As Catra pulled the laptop closer and tried to concentrate past the smell of Adora’s lotion, her seat cushion shifted underneath her and mumbled, “What, is the chair  _ right  _ there not good enough?”

“The view is better up here, Princess.”  _ Don’t turn around, you fucking moron!  _ Catra whiteknuckled the urge away, knowing that if she whipped around, Adora’s face would be  _ right  _ there and then there’d be another urge she’d be resisting and they’d be back down on the dirt ground of the park all over again.  _ But I did get why she stayed on top of me so fucking long. I could get used to this... _

“View’s pretty good from up here too.” Adora’s voice was low, sending chills up Catra’s back. Okay, how inappropriate would it be to turn around right now and make out with her in front of all her dainty friends? ‘Cause it  _ sounded  _ like that’s what Adora wanted and if she kept testing Catra like this everyone in this damn building was about to get a very big- and graphic- surprise. Doing her best to ignore her little comment (mostly because it obliterated Catra’s brain into goo and embarrassingly enough, she couldn’t come up with a scathing, equally sexual, retort) and the warmth  _ still  _ spreading through her body like a freaking wildfire, Catra grunted. “I thought you said you knew how to do this,” muttered Adora.

“I do- just- shut up!” Catra flicked her hand back before turning back to the computer. “I haven’t used this program in a while.”

“So you just came over here to sit on me?”

“Shut  _ up,  _ Adora!”

Giggling, Adora shifted again and stretched her arm out. “Okay, so click on that picture. No, not that one-”

“Well you didn’t specify!”

“I  _ pointed! _ ”

“Point better!” Catra swatted at her arm. “Okay, so this one, the one of Sparkles and Queen Sparkles- Hi Sparkles.”

Looks like their bickering had drawn the tired baker out into the foyer. Glimmer was standing at the edge of their table, staring at them with enough annoyance to murder someone. Catra flashed her a toothy smile. “Look Bow, this is happening.” Glimmer threw her hand up, gesturing to the two of them.

“Oh we noticed.” Bow, from Perfuma’s side, let out a long sigh. Catra just rolled her eyes.  _ Well you wouldn’t have to notice if you just gave us some fucking space! You’re the people who wouldn’t mind their own damn business! Ugh,  _ we  _ should’ve gone to the library. _

“Yeah that one,” Adora didn’t even take notice of her roommates gaping at them. She Ra was distracting to her that way. Fuck, Catra knew that better than anybody. “Now go up to the toolbar and click the image tab. It’s um, it’s highlighted.”

Catra followed her directions, doing so as she tried not to hyperfixate on her work now on screen. The longer she stared, the more mistakes stood out to her. Had she  _ really  _ believed those proportions were anywhere close to normal? “Jesus Christ, my drawing looks like shit here.”

“No it doesn’t, Catra! Our scanner is just a piece of junk,” protested Adora, using her knee to kick her ass from underneath her.

“Okay, but aren’t we supposed to be like, presenting an amazing first draft to these publishers?” Catra asked before letting her teeth sink into her bottom lip.

“Literary agent, Catra. And don’t worry! If it doesn’t look perfect right now, but I’m sure an actual publishing company could make it look nicer. Your work is  _ not  _ the problem.”

Oh, so now Adora was just going to turn a blind eye to perfection? What, because Catra was being a dick to herself? Yeah Adora could stand to be a little less neurotic about the whole damn process, but if she gave up on her perfectionism they were more or less screwed.  _ And that’s your problem how?  _ a voice that suspiciously sounded a lot like her foster father whispered to her conscience.  _ Ugh! _ Whatever, it was her dream/funeral. Shoulders falling with a defeated sigh, Catra ran her finger around the mouse pad. “Whatever you say Princess Perfect. What do I do now? I’ve got the  _ highlighted  _ tab- are you vibrating?” The strange sensation sending waves through Catra’s body- not her arousal’s fault  _ this  _ time- stopped Catra short and she sent Adora a look.

Ocean eyes widening in realization, Adora scrambled to reach down. “Damn it, that’s my phone! What- I don’t- who is this number?” Her face scrunched up in frustration as she brought the phone to her face.

“You gonna answer it?” Catra wiggled to turn around in her lap.

“I- I dunno-”

“Answer it, Adora!” Glimmer shouted from across the room. The aggression faded instantly as they both whirled around to stare at her. In Adora’s palm, the phone continued to buzz. Glimmer threw her hands up. “I mean, you never know! It might be really,  _ really  _ good news!”

_ Uh, what the hell does she mean by that? _

“Um, okay.” Adora shrugged and swiped the green button, bringing the cellphone to her ear. “Hello? Uh, yeah this she. Yes, this is Adora Reign.” Catra, swallowing the weird surge of nerves that had just attacked out of nowhere, and nestled herself closer to the speaker. _ Who’s being nosy now? _

“Who is it?”

Adora’s answer to that was to stick her shaking hand over Catra’s mouth.  _ Holy fuck, she’s freaking out. Don’t lick her, don’t lick her.  _  “Veronica- Veronica  _ Vincent _ ? Of course I know who you are! You represent- you read my what?”

_ Shit.  _ At first Catra thought this chick- Veronica- was some ex, or maybe someone from the shit job of hers, but now it was looking like this Veronica chick was actually someone important. Adora’s eyes had gone wide, her breathing shallow, and out of the corner of her eyes, Catra could see her hands shaking. She reached out against some better, actual sensible impulse, for Adora's hand only for Adora to pull away the second their skin brushed. "You  _ loved _ it? Oh my God- how did even you get those chapters I hadn't sent any manuscripts out in a couple of months...Ms. Detario?  _ She _ sent you them?"

_ Who the fuck-  _ Adora, movements slow and steady, put her hand over the speaker of her phone, her line of sight skipping over Catra and looking across the foyer to where her friends stood.

Catra’s hands were the ones shaking now. Maybe because of that all too familiar feeling sinking her stomach like a dense rock. The feeling that had haunted her whole damn life: when Mara showed up in Weaver’s kitchen, when Hordak started favoring other foster kids, when Charlie was born. The feeling that her one ounce of happiness she’d fought to the death for was about to slip through her fingers. “What’s going on Adora?”

Above answering her now, Adora stood up and let Catra stumble off her. She landed hard on her ass in the next chair. "Glimmer? You sent a literary agent part of She Ra?"

_ A literary agent? A publisher… Fuck! _

“Yes!” Glimmer squealed in response. She and Bow were clutching each other and jumping up and down as if they’d never been this proud or excited in their lives. The rest of the lot carried a similar sickeningly happy demeanor. Mermista was shaking Perfuma’s leg while Sea Hawk paused the nauseating way he was stroking his mustache to send Adora a thumb’s up. Even Frosta dropped her homework and was staring wide eyed.

“Oh my God, when did- Yes, sorry, I’m still here,’’ faltered Adora as she returned to the phone call. Catra turned her shoulder her away and let her gaze fall to the alternating tile on the floor. Maybe it could save her from what was about to happen, what was already happening. “Oh my gosh, thank you so much, yeah- oh thank you, but-  _ wait,  _ really? Yes, I’m definitely available on that day! Thank you so much- oh you don’t have to do that, I can just email you my information. Thank you, I can’t even tell you how much this means to me- Oh, she hung up.”

All eyes turned to Adora once she put her phone down, a shuffling of positions and jostling of limbs clueing her into the motions behind her. Not Catra’s. Catra couldn’t even  _ look  _ in her direction, too busy being steam rolled by a whole myriad of emotions and whispers of hurt in voices that sounded like Weaver and Hordak. Telling her that they’d been right all along; that no matter what she did, how hard she tried or the all the fucking sacrifices she made, she was nothing. She would  _ always  _ be nothing. And Adora, big hot shot Adora, just got her ticket away from Catra. All this time Catra had been anticipating, bracing for the impact of crash she convinced herself was some dumb manifestation of her neverending issues, but had let that fear dissolve because  _ everyone  _ had convinced her she didn’t have anything to be afraid of. She should’ve slammed on the brakes a long fucking time ago, and every word that came out of Adora’s mouth next was just another sucker punch that proved so.

“That was literary agent from the Hasbro Publishing company,” Adora said after a deep breath, sending a wave of gasps through her little audience, “She wants to meet with me on the 11th to talk about signing me for a contract to publish the series She Ra: Princess of Power.”

The screams that echoed throughout the restaurant were practically deafening, but Catra didn’t even care, on the edge of screaming for a completely different reason.  _ You?! She wants to meet you?!  _ That was fucking rich considering Catra was  _ supposed  _ to be her partner, her illustrator, her missing piece that made the book so god damn good in the first place! And now Adora was just going to see this agent by  _ herself _ ? Was her work even going to be in the book? She wasn’t going to even turn to tell  _ her  _ the news. No, instead she was purposely cutting Catra out from a moment she promised was  _ theirs  _ to share. Not the people who didn’t slave over the book.  _ So much for “I can’t do this without Catra.”  _ With bitterness, she closed her fingers into fist and stared at the table while the world where Adora’s friends encircled her, jumping up and down drifted further and further away and the world where fourteen year old Catra sat staring at her torn up, once pretty sketchbook letting the emptiness take her inch closer and closer.

Guess that was what came after all the anger, all the rage and all the hurt burned up. Emptiness.

“Congratulations, Adora! It sounds like you are about to set out on the most riveting adventure!”

“We’re like,  _ so _ proud of you it’s not even funny.”

Sea Hawk and Mermista’s voices rang in Catra’s head like she been hit on the head. When Perfuma and Frosta spoke next, their words traveled through her ears through an ocean of static.

“This is so amazing! Can I give you a hug, oh I’m gonna give you a hug!”

“Adora, if you get famous you’ll remember us, right? ‘Cause if you don’t-”

“Uh, Frosta, she’s  _ just  _ publishing a book.”

“Yeah, I  _ knew  _ that Mermista! Ooh, Adora we should do a joint Ted Talk together-”

“Okay, that’s enough, everybody.” Just beyond her line of sight, Catra could see Bow push the four of them away from Adora.  _ Yeah, that’s a fucking understatement.  _ “You’re overcrowding her! And keeping us from hugging her! Adora, we’re so majorly happy for you. If anyone deserves this, it’s definitely you!”

Good thing they were too wrapped up in their own damn selves to notice Catra’s pathetic scoff or the way she crossed her arms and slumped into the back of her chair. All her showmanship was in vain though; the anger she relied on to keep her the closest to stable someone like her could be wouldn’t come help her in that moment. No, it was just giving way to a much deeper, much more uncomfortable emotion. One she had used anger to hide from her whole life. Fucking weak and pathetic to fit her; sadness.

“Thank you guys, so  _ so  _ much. I really couldn’t have done it without you and all your support and- Glimmer, when did you give those chapters to the agent? And  _ what  _ chapters? I’m so confused!”

“Oh, it was just the first two,” the sound of Glimmer clasping her hands together was like a smack in Catra’s face, “And really it’s no big deal-”

_ Ugh. _

“It’s a huge deal, Glimmer! I’m- I’m getting my book published! This has been my dream for years and and- and you helped me do that!”  _ I’m, I’m, I’m, me, me, me. _

“Well, you put me in charge of your twitter, remember? Cause you hate it, remember?” asked Glimmer.

“Yeah, I do hate it.” Adora sighed.

“Well, I was doing all that promotional stuff for She Ra and Ms.Vincent DM’d me. We got to talking ‘cause she was really interested in your concept so I sent her the first two chapters. She  _ loved  _ them and then said she was gonna call you, which is why I yelled at you to answer your phone. I mean, I definitely should have asked for your permission and told you about her, but I just thought it would make such a cool surprise! And sending her the chapters was just a great way to thank you for working all the early shifts and just making so many sacrifices for me and Bow. It really was the least we could do.”

“Glimmer…” Adora’s voice shook as if she was about to start bawling. As she ran into Glimmer and Bow’s waiting arms, soaking in all the unconditional love and gratitude, Catra’s stomach soured.  _ I should get the fuck out of here. She hasn’t even looked at me since she got this stupid phone call but at least her “family” cares so god damn much. Obviously  _ my  _ contributions just aren’t as fucking important-  _ “Oh my God, guys, you know what this means?”

A murmur of confusion stopped Catra from grabbing her backpack. “Uh, other than you’re gonna get an amazing book published starring all of us?” asked Mermista.

“No, it means I can quit my stupid job at Light Spinner’s! And I’m never gonna have to see Chad’s dumb ugly ass homophobic face or work late nights  _ ever  _ again!” Adora cheered, jumping up and down. Of course all of her other friends thought this was greatest news on the fucking planet, laughing, cheering, and jumping with her in a giant annoying love fest, but Catra? Catra was grabbing her back pack and whisking past them before they could see the weak, pathetic tears in her eyes. She was getting the hell out of that place and she was  _ never  _ coming back. It’s not like she would ever need to, so this was a bridge she could happily burn. That’s what you did when everything came to an end, as far as Catra had been taught.

Adora was quitting her temp job. It was one knife in Catra’s back that Adora was getting a version of She Ra that none of Catra’s work was even gonna be in- seriously, did that bitch Sparkles even  _ mention  _ her work to that agent lady? Or was Adora wrong and she could’ve left Catra out of this and  _ safe  _ the whole damn time because her writing itself was always enough?- and that the nights at the park were definitely over, but now Adora was quitting. No more late nights ever again, that’s what she said right? So what’s she need an Uber for anymore?

What would she need Catra for anymore?

_ So this is the end? The crash?  _ Catra didn’t know who her thoughts were speaking to as she pushed open the bakery door and walked out into the warm May air. That mental picture of Hordak, probably because that bastard was  _ always  _ right, and Catra knew that, too.  _ Weird, I don’t remember it hurting this fucking much when I crashed the Mustang. _

-

“Where are my fucking keys?” Catra cursed through hot tears running down her face, desperately digging through all the crap in her bag as she leaned on her car for support. The sun had long set and left her scrambling for them in darkness. She knew they were down there, she could hear them jingling, but fuck it she couldn’t find them under the stupid notebook! Everytime her fingers brushed the cover it was a taunting reminder that Catra walked in with purpose only to have walked out empty handed. No book, no money, no date, no Adora. Like everything in her life, it’d had all been for absolutely fucking nothing. “Stupid fucking notebook-  _ there!”  _ Catra yanked them out, not giving a shit if they scratched the notebook, as she hit the unlock button on Marshmallow’s dumb remote with shaking fingers.

Catra ripped the door open and flung her tired body on the seat. She was caught between the urge to cry and the urge to scream. Using the back of her gloved hand, she wiped the tears from her face, trying to remember the last time she let herself cry over something as stupid as this, but honestly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried at all.  _ Whatever,  _ she scoffed,  _ if I can drive with a goddamn migraine I can drive crying.  _ Reaching for her keys once again, Catra’s swallowed the lump in her throat and set her thoughts on going home, when a voice-  _ her  _ voice- came out of nowhere and stopped her whole fucking world. “I always wondered how you held a thirteen year grudge against me just because I left and didn’t say goodbye-”

“Adora-”

“-but now that I’m on the other side, I’m starting to get it.”

Adora had followed Catra. She left her little posse and little party to chase her. How thoughtful.

Mustering a deadly mix of anger and courage, Catra pushed herself out her car. Good thing she stopped fucking crying now that they were standing just a car’s width away from each other and Adora could read the emotion on her face like Catra was a book  _ she  _ wrote. Too bad Catra didn’t trust herself to speak without giving into that weakness again. After a painstaking thirty seconds of their standoff, Catra muttered, “I’m leaving ‘cause I have a migraine okay? Your friends are great, Adora, but they’re also really fucking loud-”

“No you don’t.” Adora took a step forward and crossed her arms. “I know when you have a migraine because you become agitated and irritable, you cover your eyes and you lay your head down  _ and  _ you tell me. Because that was our agreement, remember?”

Her words hung in the heavy air between them. Catra couldn’t stand to let Adora surprise her again, to give her another chance to show her how much she cared for and understood her. So she didn’t speak, just bit her tongue until she hoped it bled. “You’re running away, Catra.”

“Oh, and you would fucking know, wouldn’t you?” growled Catra, barring her teeth through tears she couldn’t stop for the life of her. Hanging onto the car door, she also couldn’t stop herself from borderline screaming, “I know you’re cutting me out of She Ra, Adora. It’s not like you have any use for me anymore! So  _ I  _ get to run before you get to cut me off, okay?”

“Why? Because I’m just another Weaver or Hordak, right? I’m just gonna use you to get whatever I want and I can never just love you as the person you are? How could you  _ assume _ I was just like them, Catra? Was that  _ all  _ this was to you?” Adora demanded. She was standing her ground, refusing to crumble, refusing to bend, possessing the audacity to challenge her like this. The audacity to refuse to let her go this time around. When Mara took Adora from her, she didn’t even say goodbye. It’s not like she had a choice in the matter. Now that she did, she was choosing not to go in the first place.

But those thoughts, the realization that Adora was fighting for them, they didn’t- and couldn’t- stand across the contention of Catra’s fury. Who gave a shit if Adora was saying this  _ now _ , it still didn’t change the way she had acted during and after that stupid fucking phone call! Besides, Catra wouldn’t back down now. No way in hell was she just going to let Adora stand her ground and just fall to her knees on her own, especially not after that little stunt she’d pulled.

“Well, what was  _ this  _ to  _ you,  _ Adora?” Catra’s voice started loud and bitter only to crack and falter. “‘Cause god damn it, I can’t figure it out, okay?”

“I-” Adora took a step forward, but Catra was far from done.

“And I didn’t think you were Hordak or Weaver! I wanted to, but I didn’t okay? I kept coming back and I did your dumb book because I _wanted_ to be with you, but it doesn’t matter does it? You didn’t even fucking look at me after the call! What was I supposed to think of that?” Wiping snot from her nose, Catra looked up to stare at Adora. There, she had said it. Adora, hugging herself, had obviously heard it. Her ugly, sniveling feelings were out in the open to gawk at, no longer poisoning her heart and turning it to a gaping black hole. Now why did Catra still feel so fucking empty?

“I’m not cutting you out of She Ra, Catra. I was just- I was just shocked I got the call at all! It was totally surreal and you should’ve been the first to know and in a perfect world, that’s the way it would have been, but... you also ran out on me. When I turned around you were just gone!” Adora walked around the car as she spoke. The closer she got, the more Catra fought the grueling, conflicting urges to back up and to meet her, keeping her locked in position by the door.

“How do you know the literary agent is even interested in my work, Adora? Did Sparkles send the chapters with my illustrations, or was it just  _ your  _ stuff _? _ ” Catra bit the last bitter word.

“I don’t know what versions of the chapters Glimmer sent, unfortunately,” Adora rubbed her arm, “but it doesn’t matter Catra! I’m not letting them sign me and have She Ra if you’re not represented either. And if they won’t, then- then we’ll find another publisher, okay? I’m not breaking another promise with you and I’m  _ not  _ doing this without you, like I said.”

Something in the way Adora looked at her, ocean eyes determined and stubborn as hell, solidified the certainty of her words and the empty feeling inside Catra flickered. As she fought back a small, almost amused smile, Catra asked, “You’re really gonna throw away what’s probably your only shot… for me?” Adora nodded and Catra scoffed, “That’s pretty stupid Princess.”

“Yeah, I know,” she smiled, leaning just a little on Marshmallow’s car, “but you know what, I’m actually feeling pretty good about it. Veronica  _ did  _ say she liked the drawings Glimmer put up on the She Ra twitter, I doubt it will be  _ that  _ hard to convince her if she isn’t convinced already, so… will you come to the meeting with me?”

“And possibly get to threaten these publishers? Yeah, that sounds fun, put me down.” This time she couldn’t help the little upturn of her mouth. Adora’s expression was worth the ounce of vulnerability anyway. She always was.

_ Glimmer put my drawings up? The fuck?  _ That was one hell of a surprise. So sparkly creme puff didn’t have it out for her head after all? Or maybe she did- and Catra wouldn’t blame her- and had just let this one slide for Adora’s sake. No one had bothered asking Catra for  _ her  _ permission, a fact that made her scar and skin squirm, but hey, if this agent lady liked the drawings on twitter, than maybe Catra wouldn’t have to take the knife she kept in her boot to this meeting.  _ Maybe. _

Inching closer, Adora took a deep breath. “You know this didn’t mean nothing to me, Catra? And- and it wasn’t just about She Ra either? I wanted to be with you too, and that was just the easiest way to get to you without being, I dunno, threatening? Sorry, not to go back to the animal metaphor, but it’s- it’s true.”

“Really?” This is what Catra had suspected, but still. It was weird to finally hear and not just drive herself batshit crazy thinking about. Her hands dropped from the car door.

“Yeah. And it wasn’t my only excuse either. I mean, why did you think I made us go to some park and not just work here?” asked Adora, gesturing back to the bakery.

“I thought- oh shit…” Catra trailed off before realization smacked her upside the head. Adora, knowing full well how intrusive and loud and all around annoying her chosen family could be, picked some romantic ass park out in the middle of nowhere so that they would be  _ alone.  _ And not just to work. Adora wanted Catra to  _ herself _ , a thought that sent a satisfying shiver down Catra’s spine.  _ So I’m not the only one who doesn’t like to share?  _ Stupidity continuing, Catra asked her, “Wait, so that was on  _ purpose? _ ”

Adora choked on her laughter. “Oh my God. And Bow thought  _ I  _ was oblivious?”

“Shut up.” Catra rolled her eyes. This was the air conditioning ploy to get the jacket off all over again. Without the extreme emotional toll that post traumatic stress always brought, so that was a bonus, or whatever. Catra could only guess that the lesson here was that she just stop underestimating Adora; the other woman may have enough dumbass moments for the two of them combined (Catra having one just now was well deserved karma in that case) because she was also, without a doubt, the smartest fucking person Catra had ever met. No one else could’ve come up with the world of Etheria, reinvented the sword and the stone mythos in a way that was actually really fucking good this time, created an extensive cast of developing characters and an ancient language like Adora had. No one else would have let Catra into the world, as a kick ass antagonist or as her kick ass illustrator, like Adora had. So while this, what they had, wasn’t completely about She Ra for either of them, Catra had to admit that she’d been scared of losing that part. “Look, I’m sorry. It was pretty shitty of me to run out like that, it was a re-” the word caught in Catra’s throat when she caught the look on Adora’s face, “fuck, sorry still working on that.”

“It’s okay,” shrugged Adora, like the patient smile on her face was a promise she’d wait for Catra to get better. As long as she tried, and  _ damn,  _ was Adora an incentive to try.

“I… I was just scared, like really fucking scared. It was just really starting to look like, I dunno, the end. Like hell was I going through that again.” Catra sighed. “And now that we’re getting She Ra published, I still am kinda scared you’ll figure out some day that you just don’t have any use for me.”

Crossing her arms and tilting her head, Adora just laughed.  _ Okay, rude.  _ “Catra, I can’t predict the future but it’s not like I’m gonna leave you like some unwanted kitten in a box. You mean a lot more to the people in your life than just some tool and I really wish I could just undo whatever Hordak did to make you think that.”  _ Yeah, me fucking too,  _ Catra thought as she blinked surprise tears from her eyes. “But I know it’s not that simple, so I guess I can’t like beat you over the head about it. If I did Bow would be  _ so  _ disappointed in me it’s not funny. Maybe he could help- wait, you really thought  _ this  _ was the end of She Ra?”

“Well yeah,” Catra started, right before stumbling in dead on into dumbass moment number two.  _ Oh, shit!  _ Look, it wasn’t completely her fault that she didn’t figure that out; it’s not like Adora  _ told  _ her the end of the story. Also, she hadn’t read a book since high school ‘cause she was too busy with what was it? Oh yeah,  _ surviving _ , so she didn’t know how long they were anymore! Sue her. Catra looked up at Adora with wild eyes. “Shit, are you saying that you have a sequel planned?”

“Duh. This is a  _ series,  _ Catra. I have several planned,” she winked. Without thinking, Catra started laughing. Of course,  _ of fucking course,  _ this was not a one time thing. Not with Adora and her ungodly stack of worldbuilding binders.

_ Get the notebook, get the notebook! This is the perfect time for the notebook, Catra!  _ Conscience Scorpia screamed at her. And really she was right. Catra just had to avoid chickening out before the moment passed completely.  _ Okay, calm down. There’s just one more thing I gotta get out of the way.   _ “Ugh, this means I have to go through with our deal.” Catra feigned frustration, leaning her chin on the top of the car door.

“You don’t have to-” Typical Adora.

“Uh yeah, I kinda  _ do,  _ Princess _.  _ That was the whole thing. You get your publishing miracle and then I actually pursue an apprenticeship- god, I’ve  _ never  _ said that out loud, weird- and also,” Catra sighed as she prepared for the next part, “you get to teach me how to budget. Gross.”

Adora’s eyebrows flew up and her jaw dropped in way that was way too fucking cute to be legal. “Wait, what? I don’t- I don’t remember that part of the deal. You still want to do that? With  _ me? _ ”

“Oh, so perfect Adora  _ doesn’t  _ remember everything?” Catra teased, sticking her tongue out past her incisors as she dangled her arms over the door. Sliding right past her question of whether or not Catra actually wanted to budget was one hundred percent on fucking purpose. Like hell Catra didn’t want to cut coupons and make a spreadsheet to see where she could “cut back her spending.” But she did want to be with Adora.

“Hey, that was a few weeks ago and also we’ve been crazy busy, so I think I deserve to be let off the hook for this one.” Adora stuck her tongue out in protest, crossing her arms and putting on her signature pout. For a few seconds they just stood and stared at each other like that, but then Adora’s shoulders relaxed and she took a deep breath. “Man, the next few weeks are gonna be completely insane, aren’t they?”

“Pfft, you’re gonna enjoy every minute of it, Princess. Also,  _ you’re _ not the one who has to make an Instagram and whatever the hell a Patreon is, so…” Catra trailed off and winked.

“I could-”

“ _ Don’t  _ offer to help me, Adora, that’ll just make me procrastinate. Sweet of you though, thanks.”

Nodding with a resigned sigh, that pink blush back in her cheeks, Adora rolled back on the heels of her feet. “So I guess we have a lot of work to do, huh?”

“Yeah, we do.” Catra bit her lip. This, this awkward lull in the conversation, this is exactly what Scorpia had told her to wait for. And the Barnes and Noble attendant who was helping clean up spill number one. Catra’s gaze fell to her backpack still sitting in the driver’s seat. Fuck, it was really now or never, wasn’t it? “Hey, since you’re gonna do a sequel, I have something for you.”

“What? Really?” Adora perked up right before deflating in annoyance, “Catra if this-”

Rolling her eyes as far back in her head as they would go, Catra cut off her dumb ranting by shoving the lavender notebook in her hands. “It’s not! I just thought- look, you really need a new one. And… and I owed you. For everything.”

Adora didn’t speak. Her mouth agape, she stared at Catra for a few seconds, her gaze then falling to the book in her hands. As she ran her fingers over the cover, Adora began to smile, slowly until she was lighting up the dark street around them. “Catra, I-” Finally, she looked up, “thank you for this. I love it. Really, I do.”

_ Oh thank fucking God.  _ Catra thought for a brief second she was actually going hit the pavement fainting in relief. Good thing Adora’s striking smile kept her shaking legs standing. “Put the other one out of its misery.  _ Please,  _ Adora-”

“I will, I will, I promise!” she laughed, shoving the car door with just a fraction of her brute strength into Catra. Those ocean eyes of hers fell again and she started chewing on her lip and rocking on her heels once more, waiting for wherever this was going to take her.

_ Go for it!  _ Scorpia screamed, but the question was already on Catra’s tongue. Time to prove satisfaction brought the cat back and send mental Hordak back to the darkest, dustiest reaches of her brain. Voice trembling, Catra let the words that’d been eating her all night just come, “Hey, if you ever get tired of work, maybe we could take a break?”

_ Wow I sound fucking dumb! _

“Huh?” Adora was too busy marveling at her new notebook to process the request, and Catra had to keep herself from smacking her forehead. Yeah, Catra may have worded that terribly, but it was looking like it was Adora’s turn to have a dumbass moment. And somehow it was easier to ask when those curious ocean eyes weren’t boring holes into her skull.

“Like, I dunno,”  _ fuck I do know, “ _ we could go get a drink Friday night? And not work?”

Adora’s grip on the notebook slipped in that second, and she  _ dropped  _ it as her eyes grew two sizes. Throwing her hand over her mouth to keep from cackling, Catra watched as she frantically dipped down and scrambled to pick it back up. “Are you- are you asking me out, Catra?” She didn’t sound scared, just surprised. And eager. Really fucking eager. Like she’d been waiting a long time for this.

_ Oh my fucking God.  _ “Are you  _ seriously  _ asking me that, Adora?”

“Sorry, sorry I just thought- fuck it,  _ yes _ I’ll go out with you.” Adora was  _ beaming,  _ eyes bright and smile blinding. Holding the notebook close and rocking on her toes, she looked like she was about to start jumping up and down like she had after Agent Veronica called. And that was a victory all in it of itself for Catra.

_ FUCK! YES! _

The next moments were a complete and total blur. Adora had obliterated that infectious emptiness and replaced it with elation, or  _ satisfaction  _ Catra could say. She could barely breathe, or think, or function, because operating off of happiness alone was something she was far from used to. Heart a pounding drum and mouth hurting from smiling, Catra agreed to pick up Adora up at the bakery that coming Friday night. Adora let her pick the bar, punching her shoulder playfully when Catra mocked her tolerance; either she was being generous or all the oxygen had left her brain too but Catra didn’t- and couldn’t care. Finally,  _ finally  _ something had worked out for them, for her and when Adora invited her back in to the bakery, Catra declined without thinking. As fucking amazing as this moment was, like hell was she going to back in there face those bozos fawning over them like Adora walked back in with a ring.

Instead, Catra called on tiredness as an excuse (she actually was really was fucking tired and knew that once she swore Scorpia her undying gratitude she was going to pass the fuck out) Catra hugged Adora goodbye, no longer having to force herself to drink in every second because it wasn’t going to last. As she got into the car, Catra let Adora’s eyes follow her as the other woman, clutching the notebook like a freaking lifeline, walked back to the bakery and stopping in front of the door with a wonderstruck look on her face.

Catra saw that her expression was pretty much the same as Adora’s, she noticed when she caught a glimpse of herself in the side view mirror. Biting her lip to keep herself from smiling like a dork, Catra wondered to herself  _ I’m not gonna crash the car like a ditz, am I? _

Out of habit, Catra looked behind her as she pulled away. The unrelenting impulse to see if this time Adora looked back that she could never resist. Only this time, Adora wasn’t looking her way.

‘Cause that dork was too busy screaming at the top of her lungs “YES!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they did it! those funky little lesbians they finally did it! And She Ra is getting published!!!!!
> 
> but Savannah you ask... no kiss? and another whole chapter? when is Catra going to get to pursue her dream? And what about that cinco de mayo party you told us was important? what sneaky little card do you have up your sleeve?
> 
> well that’s for me to know and you to find out, so seatbelts on kids. 
> 
> still, I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! I know it was really long, so I applaud your patience with me. thanks for hanging in there. 
> 
> Oh, before I forget! A lot of people have expressed the sentiment that they are upset the series is ending, which honestly very flattering that you guys are just as invested as I am, so i wanted to take this chance to ask y’all if you wanted more of this series? there is definitely a universe to explore here and I do have ideas…. it’s up to you guys!
> 
> my door is always open [princessofgayskull](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/post/184904348470/out-of-context-spoiler-for-the-next-chapter-of)


	12. nothing safe is worth the drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was what is was to love, to desire and want. It was to covet loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we are. The last and final chapter of upper west side.
> 
> When I started this story back in December of last year, I had no idea what a challenge it would bring, or what a chance it would give me to strengthen my writing, or explore my own life. I’m incredibly grateful to have had this chance to have stumbled upon this idea, and come to write to completion- which is something I’d never be able to do.
> 
> Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to do ANY of this without the support of all of you!! Every single read, every single kudos, and every single comment (ESPECIALLY THE COMMENTS) have given me the motivation to continue seeing this through. It’s so incredibly flattering and honoring to know that you all have loved reading the story as much as I’ve loved writing it. I really wish I could give each and every single one of you a hug. I really am so grateful. Knowing how much the story means to you guys, that means the whole world to me. thank you for your patience for between updates, and encourage me to take my time.
> 
> it’s kind of dorky, but I’ve always wanted to write the 100k+ fic someone would find at 11 at night and stay up reading all night. So, thanks for helping that little dorky dream come true. 
> 
> also, thank you to everyone who’s been keeping up with me on tumblr and messaging me. I love you and it’s been so awesome how this fic and she ra have connected us together!
> 
> so now come the apologies. I apologize for the wait; I’ve been traveling, and my health issues just seem to never, ever end. I hope that the wait hasn’t deterred you too much. Second, I’m just gonna go ahead and apologize for the length. You know me, long winded and dramatic. there are some scenes that got away from me, some of them i’ve had planned from the beginning and loved them, and some that i just felt there needed to be there. 
> 
> ALSO: i know that you’re going to get to a point in this chapter and absolutely hate me (and some you are gonna send me the ‘do you think making me cry’ is cool meme, as well as some other mean memes) but I’m promising you know- THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING! i would not string you along for nine months for an ending you wouldn’t like. So don’t give up on the story just yet.
> 
> so, given that this is probably gonna take a while to read, I should probably let you get to it!
> 
> I… really hope you don’t hate this.

Adora knew she was not a patient person.

In fact, she was possibly the farthest thing from a patient person. Life experience after life experience proved that, rubbing it in the face of her pained pride, over and over and over again. Whether that life experience was threatening one of Mara’s incomptent doctors with the choice of a fire extinguisher to the crotch or litigation she didn’t even have the money for because they were still running tests like they had been for the past 48 hours (none of which she got any sleep during) or shoveling the uncooked batter of a new recipe Glimmer was experimenting with, out of the apartment kitchen for just a quick bathroom break, into her mouth even though Glimmer was  _ just  _ about to put it in the oven and it would only take approximately 25 minutes to cook, couldn’t she just wait? Whether the life experience was insisting on walking on her still healing, post surgery leg  _ without  _ crutches in a move that was one brain cell even for her, Bow had chastised her when he found her crying out of pain on the student union stairs, or pulling out clumps of flaxen hair because it had been three hours and yet her writer’s block  _ hadn’t _ gone away, Adora knew. She absolutely  _ sucked  _ at being patient. 

It’s not like Adora had any plans to learn that particular life skill any time soon. Her stubborn lack of patience, combined with mountains of anxiety so massive one could mine panic from them, had allowed Adora to get where she was in life. She could make the argument that it was the reason she was her high school’s valedictorian, graduated university with honors -despite the major injury, major change and major depression- and worked two jobs on a grand total of four hours of sleep. On a good night that is. See, Adora could never count on the assertion she was not one bad move away from losing everything, so she never sat around waiting for life to hand her anything, not when the safer choice was to just rush up and take it before it dissipated right in front of her eyes. Again. The tragedies of a messy twenty-four years had chipped and cracked away Adora’s soul, shaping her into a disciplined self perfectionist to the point of mental torture. Discipline and patience were, without a doubt, not friends. 

And Adora, trapped by hypnotizing simplicity and false safety of black and white thinking, chose discipline over patience.

‘Cause why sit back and succumb to relaxation when she could push herself harder and bring what she wanted closer, instead of letting it simply taunt her as it faded away? Patience could wait for another day.

_ Patience is a virtue, Adora,  _ Mara used to say through gritted teeth and strained composure. Adora had to look back at that, roll her eyes and laugh. Mara? Patient? Absolutely not! If Mara was a patient person then Madame Razz  _ definitely _ wasn’t packing peach Schnapps into Adora’s high school basketball game. Mara only pulled out that whopper of hypocrisy when Adora was getting on her last nerve, wanting to know where they were going or what they were waiting for and her guardian would rather slip her a casual lie then break her tight lipped exterior.

Dancing around her bedroom as the pink light of the setting sun washed over her carpet, her Friday night playlist blasting from her bluetooth speaker, Adora snorted once again at the memory of Mara’s aggravated  _ how-did-I -get-stuck-with-this-child-face.  _ She’d been thinking about her a lot, Mara, as of late. Maybe it was finishing the first installment of She Ra where Mara’s character remained a ghost lingering over the story, or maybe it was the shouldering of sacrifices that had her thoughts wandering to what the woman so distant from Adora shouldered. After all this time, the seed of guilt Adora tried to bury over Mara’s death had grown; now standing and basking in the payoff of her own sacrifices, Adora also stood facing the flower of her guilt that had bloomed like a daisy. 

_ Bow would say it’s not my fault,  _ Adora took a deep, steadying breath and perched herself on the edge of her bed, curling her legs to her chest. The music that had been filling her ears seconds before now seemed far away,  _ and that it’s super dysfunctional to say  _ I’m _ the one that killed Mara… but, if she had just left me with Weaver and not taken on raising me, maybe she would’ve had the energy, the money, the  _ desire,  _ to take care of herself when she got sick. But she chose me instead. _

Sighing, Adora flopped back on her bed and forced her eyes shut. “Gah, I’m doing it again!” she growled, her thumbs absentmindedly finding and hooking the straps of her bra only to pull it forward and snap it back against her skin, the sharp sting settling into her nerves a tangible punishment to remind her tricky brain: stop self sabotaging like this! At this rate indulging her anxiety was going to ruin everything she’d worked and waited for. Everything! Besides, tonight wasn’t supposed to be about Adora’s dead caretaker, or her guilt over her dead caretaker that fell on her conscience like flower petals. Tonight was about her and Catra. 

"Catra.” A smile taking over her face faster than a burning blush, Adora twirled a piece of her hair around her finger in front of her face, biting down on it as the thought of the other girl chased any misery she harboured away. What a 180. Wow, she was a dope. Like a romantic lead in an 80's teen romcom, Adora had become giggly, daydreaming, lovestruck dope, fallen back on her bed anticipating the ‘Big Date.’ Catra really didn’t come off as the kind of person who could send Adora dancing onto cloud nine, yet here they were, here Adora was, whispering her name ad enjoying the chills it sent up her spine. Speaking of 180.

The whole ‘I’ll claw your fucking eyeballs out’ aesthetic and her cocktail of mixed signals about whether or not she truly wanted Adora in her passenger seat didn’t really chart the way into a fairy tale ending. Not that Adora could hold that against Catra. Her reasons for the arm's length philosophy hurt, considering Adora was responsible for about 75% of it, but they weren't unwarranted or unfounded. It’s not like she really thought she was gonna get-or  _ deserved- _ her happy ending either, not after charred vehicles and homes burnt down, not after poor prognosis’ and torn ligaments. Not after all the people she allowed to hurt and suffer when she turned her back on them. 

“Oh shut up brain!” Adora bolted up, knocking a couple of pillows off her bed as she tore at her ponytail. Couldn’t her neuroticism take _ one  _ night off? Just let her enjoy a drink with the lost love she’d found, or that had found her? Her brain could go back to that  _ after  _ she got home tonight. They’d earned it, for Pete’s sake.  _ Adora  _ had earned it.

Because tonight, her patience had finally,  _ finally  _ paid off.

_ “You can crash my car tonight, go out wasting all my time and money (money).” _ The bluetooth speaker on her vanity buzzed with the melody and she grinned despite her worry. Adora  _ loved  _ this song, and had been listening to it almost on repeat, because the lyrics, melody, harmony, they reminded her of Catra. Okay, both Catra and herself. Now that it had come on her shuffle, it was like the song itself had given her permission to think about something other than being a flight risk who'd broken her bones on the ground before because she jumped too early. Something, or someone, like Catra. And Adora was more than happy to daydream about Catra. _ “I love the way you're breaking my heart, And I can't stand to see you leaving lonely.” _

The night Adora realized she had, real  _ concrete  _ emotions (the words “romantic stylez” via Jake Peralta came to mind- maybe because she’d been rewatching Peraltiago episodes so frequently Bow and Glimmer threatened to take away her TV privileges; mostly Glimmer because she wanted to rewatch Arrested Development and threatened that if Adora didn't give her the TV she was changing the Hulu password to some niche Bluth Family reference when Adora wasn't around.) for Catra, the night at the bakery the past grabbed Adora by her ankles, sucked her in and spit her out in a humiliating defeat in front of all her friends. The night Catra found her hiding in the shadows of her shame like she’d found her all those years ago hiding behind those boxes in the basement. The night Catra held Adora and she realized she never,  _ ever  _ wanted to let go, that was the same night Glimmer and Bow urged Adora to try patience instead of force just about half an hour earlier. Adora still went ahead and maneuvered Catra’s jacket off without her consent and the universe, rightly, got her back for that, proving her friends’ point that force wouldn’t work with Catra.

Catra was self-declared damaged goods (no, for real she’d called herself that,  _ to _ Adora and then they argued about it until the other woman ended up with a migraine) with enough emotional baggage to make a child’s fort out of like they used to back at Weaver’s. And while that was just another reason Adora wanted Catra in her life- having someone to sift through that baggage with, someone to sit beside her as she dug through those  _ actual  _ boxes who genuinely understood, no tear-filled explanation needed, was the world’s most underrated feeling- she knew that it wasn’t so much baggage Catra couldn’t pack up in the blink of an eye and drive away in Marshmallow’s car never to be seen again if Adora moved too fast or too recklessly. No, she had to be smart about this. She had to be gentle, demonstrate she was willing to take the good with the bad,  _ prove  _ she wanted all of Catra, not just some dreamt up cardboard version of her that was no challenge to love and hope Catra did the same with her.

And she had to show Catra that she had absolutely no  _ intention  _ of treating her like a piece on a board game. Adora didn’t and never thought herself outright manipulative, unless she completely underthought her actions and had accidentally become like the foster mother she so despised- it didn’t matter! Adora just had to try instead of stand paralyzed by overthinking. Show don’t tell, like in her writing, right?

Show don’t tell with Catra would take time and patience, Adora’s weakest and clumsiest mental muscle. But she figured it was worth, the discomfort, the waiting. Anything for Catra was.

So thank  _ God  _ for She Ra. When Adora asked Catra to be her illustrator and her partner, it was not meant to be an excuse to see Catra, that was just a major benefit. Now all she had to do was get Catra away from her well-meaning, but extremely pyring friends. She loved them and all, but they got on  _ her  _ nerves more than enough, and just Sea Hawk alone was enough to get Catra to delete Adora’s number. And that’s where the idea of the park came in. Adora knew it from her morning runs. Out of the way, not too personal like one of their apartments, not too compact or uncomfortable like the backseat of the car. Her phone had a hot spot, all she had to do was charge her laptop and be ready to shell out a  _ lot  _ of money to eat with Catra every single night for two weeks. Every single night for two weeks that Adora got to sit across from Catra. Every single night for two weeks that Adora had to force thoughts about how romantic and date-like being with her was like to leave her head lest she do something or say something that crossed the line. Every single night for two weeks that Adora allowed herself to fall just a little bit more for Catra, with the way the sunset reflected two different colors in her eyes, the way she laughed at her with her mouth full of food, with the vulnerability she showed when she opened her sketchbook up to Adora- holy  _ fuck  _ was she talented- with the smell of cinnamon, the unrelenting sarcasm, the woman beyond the pain, her, her,  _ her.  _

_ “What are you looking at?”  _ Catra narrowed her sharp eyes at her one night while they were trying to work through the chapter with Madame Razz. Mostly they were just eating a bucket load of Chinese food and trying to outdo each other with the most annoying roommate stories. She was chewing her food as she asked her question, arguably unattractive, but it was just  _ so _ Catra that that thought never crossed Adora’s mind.  _ Weaver would be so pissed at her right now.  _ Biting back a smile, Adora shrugged and told her that it was nothing. But she did have soy sauce on her chin.

Never did Catra notice Adora staring at her before that moment. Adora never wanted to  _ stop  _ staring, so she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to risk an admission of her feelings, her thoughts about how  _ beautiful  _ Catra was, choosing instead to keep those to herself. Always looking but never touching.

By the time Adora editing the last couple of paragraphs of  _ The Battle of Bright Moon,  _ she’d memorized every little detail, every little mannerism, and every single reason to fight, and keep fighting, for Catra. And she was slowly becoming all Adora could ever think about.

_ And yet she was  _ so _ confused when I walked out after her. She has no idea what she means to me.  _ Adora rolled her eyes at that memory of their little post-phone call conversation, teeth digging in the skin of her smile. The thought of Catra’s wild and angry eyes drilling her for having the audacity to run after her like she had run after Adora made her giggle.

_ “Baby, I'm freaking out, lay it on me. Light me up and lay me down and love me like you shouldn't, no.” _ Smiling as the music continued, Adora bounced herself off the bed. She had to get ready, after all, thanks to their post-post-phone call conversation.

Catra asked Adora out. That had genuinely 100% happened. It wasn’t a dream nor a trick or some messy draft she’d lined out in her notebook on the page titled ‘ _ endgame.’  _ Catra wanted to see her outside of their work, without their friends, just  _ them _ . God, just remembering how she’d asked her to get a drink sometime gave Adora enough gleeful energy to do a freaking cartwheel across her bedroom floor to her vanity mirror. "Whee!" 

When was the last time a few words had made her  _ this  _ happy? Probably when Veronica called and told her she wanted to represent them and give her a contract for She Ra, but that counted in a different, still pretty amazing, way.

Falling into the matching wooden chair of her vanity, Adora let out a long, dreamy sigh watching her reflection mirror her movements. The whole honeymoon attitude had stayed with her the whole week, making her even more of a clutz at home and in the bakery, but Adora shook off the worried and vexed looks from Bow and Glimmer. In the daze of this happiness, she could not find it within herself to care. Besides, after almost rotting away in a cubicle and pining oh so patiently, Adora had every intention to let herself feel this feeling and to stretch it out as long as it could last. From the high of walking into the bakery, new and beautiful and pristine (and expensive, Adora knew) notebook clutched in her arms to the high of walking out of Martin’s office after putting in her two weeks and seeing the look on Chad’s face as he proclaimed “the whole author thing wasn’t bullshit?! Hey Blondie- she just flipped me off!!” Adora wanted to drown in this happiness and then she wanted to wake up clean, free of the misery of late night shifts and disinterested publishers, left only with her infatuation for Catra. 

_ Catra.  _ Adora’s gaze flickered to the bottom of her mirror. Placed with expert care at the edge was the drawing the artist had secretly tucked between the creme colored pages to be found in a calm intimate moment when Adora was alone. Of course, even in the chaos of Glimmer freaking about She Ra getting published and Bow freaking out about Adora’s date and Sea Hawk setting a macaroon he hadn’t even paid for on fire with a lighter Mermista swore she confiscated because he was feeding off how everyone was freaking out about everything, Adora opened the notebook just to marvel at Catra’s gift (and because she was something of a notebookaholic) and the drawing had fallen onto the floor. Adora’s heart skipped then swelled at the sight of the paper- also because she couldn’t hear the sound of the fire extinguisher going off via Perfuma and then colliding with Sea Hawk’s knee via Frosta- because Catra had done this before. Only this time Adora didn’t open a drawing from the world of She Ra. Instead, this drawing was of herself, from the morning Catra gave Adora her original notebook back when she was gross, tired and hungover as all get out. It was the drawing Catra refused to let her even glance at that evening at the park, a decision that ended up with Adora tackling her to the dirt and pinning her there as they tried  _ desperately _ not to rip each other's clothes off in a very public place.

Scribbled in Catra’s hand writing at the bottom of the drawing, “ _ there, I let you see it. happy now, princess??” _

Adora remembered having a throbbing, swollen nose that morning as well as dark circles under her eyes that resembled portals to hell that matched her chapped lips of death all thanks to an epic bitch of a hangover. That's not how Catra drew her, though. If it weren’t for the distinct hairstyle (ugh, bangs, was 22 year-old her even  _ thinking _ ? It didn’t work when she was eight, and it sure didn’t work then) and familiar shape of her face, those charcoal lines would have made up a complete stranger. A stranger more beautiful, more lovely than the reflection staring back at her could ever be. Staring at the drawing, Adora couldn’t help but wonder.  _ Is this how Catra sees… me? _

The very thought sent a warm sensation through her veins, calming her shaky core, like a reminder that after everything, Adora was still a person worthy of loving. Worthy of being seen.

_ I should tell her that tonight. _

Snorting with derision at her own thought, Adora hunted around her vanity for that pesky tube of mascara that was always escaping her. “Yeah, I should tell her a lot of things tonight,” she muttered to herself as she found the mascara purposely camouflaged in with a punch of ink pens. Best way to hide it from Glimmer and Bow. That, and possessing only really cheap quality. Crusty and dry sent them both running.  

And getting real about dating Adora sent Catra running.  _ Okay, that’s not fair. She  _ was  _ tired. Just because it wasn’t the perfect moment you’d been imagining and dreaming about like some weirdo doesn’t mean it wasn’t a start,  _ her conscience chastised with a Mara-esque quality as Adora ran the small brush under her eyelashes, hands shaking because months of required clown get up at a business firm did not make her any better with makeup. Sighing, Adora caved to her own thoughts. “This patience thing is so stupidly hard.”

Yes, Catra driving away having maxed out her energy levels before Adora could blurt out every romantic thought she’d been  _ dying  _ to say to her was unfortunate (but probably an unrecognized stroke of luck since the moment  _ wasn’t  _ perfect; they’d been at each other’s throats again because Adora’s reaction to Veronica’s phone call wasn’t 100% perfect, go figure) but it had only pushed back that awkward act of emotional vomit to  _ tonight,  _ and that wasn’t as ideal as just telling after being gifted the notebook. 

These thoughts, they were weighing on her and haunting her, and Adora knew, she  _ knew,  _ what happened when she waited too long.

All the things they left unsaid when Adora left Catra with Weaver. All her pent up words of anger and confusion when Mara’s heart monitor fell silent and flat. No. She was not going through that again. This...monologue or admission, whatever is was... it was  _ happening.  _

_ Catra, I know I messed up when we were little. I know I didn’t deserve a second chance, but you gave me one anyway. Because after all this time you became this amazing, strong, beautiful and wonderful person who hasn’t given up as much as she thinks she has. You’re not just a fighter, you’re also a lover, coexisting in the same soul. At least I hope so. Is that selfish? Probably. _

Screwing the lid of the mascara back on, Adora tossed it back onto her vanity and placed her head in hands. No matter how many times she rehearsed this in her head, Catra was, without a doubt, going to laugh at her…

_ I think there was a part of me that was ready to give up She Ra when I met you. Or re-met you, I guess. It just wasn’t worth doing until you were a part of it. And I guess I kinda felt that way about everything. Like I was biding time until I just ran out of steam, until I just fell down and didn’t get up again. So I guess in that way, you saved me too. You understand me in a way no one else ever could. And it’s like I have my other half back and I can finally breathe. You’re not just someone I want to date or that I’m attracted to, ‘cause you are really,  _ really  _ hot, but you’re also my friend. My  _ first  _ friend. I never want to lose you again, because you mean more to me than you could ever know. Yeah, I know it’s super cheesy, really cheesy. But I mean it…  _ “Every word.” Adora finished the monologue quietly before glancing up to meet her own eyes. 

The act of not imagining Catra’s response was a purposeful choice; she couldn’t back down now at the thought of Catra laughing or spitting her face, knocking her drink over and marching away, angrier than she had ever seen her. She couldn't let herself imagine an outcome where Catra stopped speaking to her.

Actually, there was only  _ one  _ possible response Adora liked to think about. And she'd spent quite a lot of time thinking about it since that night Sea Hawk interrupted them. 

_ Because it’s not like I just want to talk to her all night and tell her my weirdo feelings,  _ Adora’s fingers found her lips and her eyes followed the movement of her finger tracing light pink flesh,  _ yeah, there’s things that haven’t been said, but also there’s things,  _ she pursed her lips,  _ that haven’t been… done.  _ Quickly, before she lost her nerve, Adora snatched up the small tube of lipgloss lying somewhere among the pen mess, tracing her lips with the soft, felt tip, dizzy with newer thoughts about the smell, and taste, of cinnamon.

Honestly the fact that she hadn’t kissed Catra was a wonder- and crime- all on it’s own. Again, she was  _ not  _ a patient person. Rather an extremely touch starved person who caved under the caress of a beautiful woman. Which is probably why more often than not they ended up not so discreetly exchanging soft touches while a centimeter away from each other's faces, not that she ever complained about it. There were moments Adora  _ swore  _ Catra was just going to take the jump, bridge the gap, and give this buildup between them some relief. Or maybe it was just hope, really desperate hope, and like many traps she laid out for herself, this was all in her head. Adora sighed as she dropped the lip gloss back on to the vanity. “Maybe I should’ve just gone with chapstick.”

“Hey, I think the lipgloss looks nice.” A rap on the frame of her door tore Adora’s attention away from the vanity and she jumped at the sound to find Bow lurking in her open doorway. There was a strange look on his face she couldn’t place.  _ Is he sick? Oh who’s the child for eating raw cookie dough now? _ “Whoops, sorry about that. But yeah, you shouldn't doubt yourself, Adora. You look great.” He flashed her a comforting smile. 

Reaching over and shutting off the King Princess song playing on her speaker, Adora shrugged and grinned as he walked through the doorway. “I hope so, I’m lowkey worried I’m just gonna look like an idiot. You know this is my first date in like a year and a half?”

“20 months actually.” Bow corrected and Adora sent him in a look. “You nervous?”

“Have you  _ met  _ me, Bow? I’d be worried if I  _ wasn’t _ nervous.”

“Fair point,” he chuckled, leaning back on her desk and crossing his arms.

“But- I dunno, it’s a good nervous. Not like I’m gonna throw up nervous,” she gestured wildly with her hands, “it’s just- it’s hard to explain.”

He lifted a caustic eyebrow.  _ Here comes that classic Bow wisdom.  _ “So like, you’re excited?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that! I’ve just- I’ve been waiting  _ so  _ long for this Bow-”

“You’ve also been working pretty hard.” 

“Yes!” Adora grabbed his shoulders and without thinking, started shaking him. “I  _ did _ work hard and I waited and you were right, it paid off! I’m getting my book published!” At this point she was squealing with happiness. The same bright happiness that had been threatening to burst out of her heart all week. “People are actually gonna  _ read _ it and- and I’m going out with Catra! She’s  _ so _ amazing, Bow, you guys- you guys don’t even know. Oh my God, I have to show you my outfit-”

“Woah!” Grabbing her roommate by the wrist, Adora ran as she practically dragged him to the other side of the room where her date night ensemble was hung composed on her closet door. This was right up his alley; Bow was the master of many plethoric things, from calligraphy to field archery to break dancing, and fashion was just one of the many mediums he liked to “dabble” in. Out of the three of them, he was always the best dressed with his pique outfit coordination, and his makeup skills far outshone Adora and Glimmer’s combined. In fact, the only one of their little depressed gay alliance who beat him sometimes was Mermista (“Well she’s richer so she can by nicer makeup.” “Uh huh, whatever you say Bow.” “And she never takes me with her when she goes shopping.”) Adora had considered going to Bow to Tan France her for the date tonight, but shot the idea down when she remembered how she pestered him almost relentlessly about every other aspect of the date. Between all her talk about Catra and all her talk about the date, Adora was surprised he wanted to speak to or be in her presence at all. Adora’s biggest challenge, now having turned down even the idea of seeking help (failed step one), was then not getting in her head as she tore through her wardrobe.

Since it took her a full 19 hours and 23 minutes to pick an outfit, it went without saying she also failed  _ that _ step. 

“Okay, so I tried to be very strategic about everything I picked out, ‘cause you know I didn’t want to pull out a cocktail dress when this is supposed to be super casual-” Adora only had one cocktail dress, actually, and she barely wore it “-but I also don’t want to look too casual like I’m not taking this seriously- God, am I sweating?” Somewhere it registered in her mind how fast Adora was talking, but that part of her brain was overshadowed by the extremely hyper and happy part, like a kid on an out of control sugar rush, “I gotta put on more deodorant- anyways, that’s why I chose this pain of jeans-" a light gray pair that was in retrospect, a complete and total indulgence buy, "-to go with this top, I had to wear it for work but just between you and me, I think Catra  _ really  _ liked it because it shows off-” Adora then gestured to her chest and bounced on her toes a little, still smiling so much it was beginning to hurt, “-and also, also my red leather jacket. Ta dah!”

The red leather jacket was her ace up the sleeve. Adora knew she looked amazing in it; it was one of the only pieces of clothing that wasn’t athelesiure wear she could say she was, without question, confident in. On the plus side, the red leather matched nicely with the shimmering white top she’d chosen, the edge and excitement of the jacket balanced out by the softness of the blouse, so she was sexy without being outright threatening. Adora also couldn’t wait to see the look on Catra’s face when she realized “Princess Pantsuit” owned and wore out in public a leather jacket.

_ Maybe we’ll match, since she's probably going to be wearing hers. Wait, have I really spent so much time worrying about what I’m gonna wear that I haven’t really thought about what she’s gonna wear? I’m guessing black leather on more black with black combat boots. She’s gonna look so fucking hot.  _

Adora also made sure to find a pair of ballet flats to wear for the night. Risking the heels for the sake of it being a special occasion only for Catra to critique the way she walked in them and/or falling spectacularly on her face in front of Catra was not worth reactivating the painful blisters that had never left her heels and pinky toes so long as she worked at Light Spinner’s.

“So what do you think?” exhaled Adora, trying to catch her breath after running her mouth for a full marathon. She braced herself for his response, then forced the tension out of her shoulders once more. This was Bow! The King of Self Esteem himself. What bad things could he possibly have to say? 

But when his face fell flat, Adora’s heart went with it.  _ Oh no, it’s a disaster, isn’t it? Ugh, why am I SO bad at this?  _ “What- what’s wrong with it?”

“You’re  _ really  _ excited about this date, aren’t you?” Bow winced, his voice strained and forehead pinched. Glancing down, Adora noticed the way he'd balled his hands into fists.  _ That can't be a good sign. _

“Uh yeah, why wouldn’t I be-” she cut herself off once she glanced back up at him. Despite the fact that Bow had been her room for at  _ least  _ five minutes, it was only at the sixth minute when Adora realized what  _ he  _ was wearing. Complete with his signature crop top look and all, Bow stood before her dressed head to toe in his black tuxedo- his nicest, most expensive suit- shined dress shoes on his feet and cummerbund missing from his middle.  _ Okay  _ how  _ did I miss that?!  _ “Are you… going on a date?” Adora asked him with hesitance and confusion. 

“Actually, no.” Bow sucked in a breath. “But I do need you to cover my shift.”

She dropped his wrist and it fell limp against his leg. “ _ What?” _

“Please don’t be upset!” He threw up his hands as she turned her back on him because it was  _ way _ too late for that. “Look, you know how my dads have been wanting taking me to the opera lately?”

“Aughhhh."  _ Hey Bow, you know how Catra's been wanting to take me out lately? _

“Well, since I’ve been so caught up in applying for grad school and getting all the volunteer hours… I kinda forgot they bought tickets for tonight. And they’re non refundable, best seat in the house kind of tickets.” As Bow kept talking, Adora waddled over to her bed and flopped on her side. There was not a single cell in her brain that was believing what she was hearing. So much for being  _ patient.  _ Months of sacrifice for these two and they what? Just wanted to reap the full benefits of her work?

Just like always. She hated, despised, how bitter that thought was but she had no plans to make herself repent for her feelings. At least not this time. And when she opened her mouth, the bitterness rolled right off her tongue. 

“And Glimmer can’t go  _ one  _ night by herself? If we don’t tell Angella, it’s not like we’re breaking the rule? Or better yet, stick Frosta or Mermista back there! God knows they could stand to work a service position for an hour or two for once in their lives.” Adora lifted herself on her elbows for a better position to glare at her roommate.  _ Were they even listening to me at all this week? I know I was being annoying- no you know what? Maybe I was being annoying but it shouldn't come as a surprise that I care about Catra and that I cared about tonight!  _ She didn't know if her eyes conveyed all that emotion so she settled for hoping she at least looked pissed off.

"Adora, you know Angella will pull the plug on the bakery if she finds out we were breaking the rules." reasoned Bow, earning another massive eye roll from her.

"Bow,  _ you _ know Catra will pull the plug on our relationship if I stand her up!" Adora shot back without missing a beat, rising off her bed to be eye level with him. And Catra had every right to be; Adora would sure as hell slam the door on anyone who dared to leave her wondering her worth all alone in a restaurant at a table for two. Bow opened his mouth to protest, but Adora was quicker and shut him down before he could start. “How could you even ask me this Bow? You know how important this is to me! How important  _ Catra  _ is to me!”

“Yeah-”

“And may I remind you, Bow, that  _ you  _ guys were the ones who told me to be patient and to wait! I did wait! And I’m done waiting.” Never dropping his eyes, Adora stood her ground. Stood it for Catra  _ and  _ herself for once. No more rolling over and making exhausting sacrifices. Now it was time to stand up.

Sighing, Bow put his hands up again, “Okay, so I may have underestimated how much you were looking forward to this-”

“Yeah, that much is clear.” Adora muttered under her breath and rolled her eyes. 

“-but I promise you I can make it up to you this time.”

_ That’s what you guys  _ always  _ say. Just cause helping with She Ra cleared much of your debt doesn’t mean you don’t owe me from before.  _ “H-How? And  _ why _ can’t someone  _ else  _ do it?” demanded Adora, throwing her arms up.

“Because,” Bow replied in a relatively calm voice that just managed to get on Adora’s nerves more, “you, Glimmer, and I are the only ones who know. We can’t have Sea Hawk in the kitchen! And Mermista on the register would be a disaster! She’d just ignore all the customers or make mean comments about what they’re wearing!”

Blowing hot air out her lips, Adora looked to the floor and her mouth set in a pout.  _ This just isn’t fair!  _ Adora, embarrassed by her shows of emotional frustration, was quick to blink the burgeoning tears in her eyes. The last thing she needed to do was cry. She’d sworn no crying tonight for  _ any _ reason, no matter how discouraging. 

_ Even if there’s no date? ‘Cause that sounds  _ really _ discouraging.  _

“Listen, if you cover this shift and reschedule with Catra, I’ll pay for your date.” Bow answered and his voice didn’t waiver for a second. He had that look in his eyes that promised Adora he stood by his words. He’d keep this commitment, wouldn't even dream of a way out of it. 

“Well we were gonna split it,” Adora responded in a hoarse voice.  _ Dang it! No crying! _

Bow perked up in a surprising turn of events. “Then I’ll cover for both of you. As like a gift! C’mon Adora, let me do this. For both of you.”   

“She wants to take me to this bar a couple miles outside of Bright Moon…” Adora bit her lip to keep from saying more. In her text Catra explained that no, she didn’t want to go to Bright Moon for just  _ one  _ night and  _ no,  _ Adora wasn’t going to be pulling some stunt where she paid for both of them. Adora said that was fine, she was broke anyways from all their work/date nights in the park. But being broke too, Catra admitted they weren’t going anywhere fancy. Just a bar she liked and hadn’t been kicked out of. Adora told her that was perfect.  _ But if Bow pays for us… maybe I could let her pick some place nicer.  _ “So, no matter where we went, you’d cover for us?”

Bow visibly gulped. “Uh, yeah. You guys deserve it, since I’m putting you out and all.”

Pausing to think, Adora tried to weigh the pros and cons of this situation only to get stuck on the idea she was taking advantage of her friend and this was possibly becoming extortion.  _ He! Owes! You!  _ Yeah, that was true. It was also true that no one else they knew could work the shift (ugh, Catra was right, having rich friends who'd never worked a minimum wage job in their lives was borderline miserable) and that Glimmer could not afford to close for the night. Glimmer’s relationship with her mother couldn’t afford it either. But Catra… They’d been texting back and forth all week and Adora knew she wasn’t the only one looking forward to tonight. She wasn’t sure a four star restaurant in the next town over would make up for going back on their plans. 

“Fine,” Adora’s shoulders fell and she plopped back down on her bed, “I’ll cover tonight but you are paying for our makeup date no matter what she picks.” 

“Awesome! Adora, you’re a lifesaver! Seriously, me and my dads really appreciate it! And Glimmer too, of course!” Bow pumped his fists, shouting in victory before tackling her in a hug. 

_ Well as long as one of us is happy. _

Wrangling out of his arms with a grunt, Adora tried to put on a brave face. “Yeah, yeah.” She brushed him aside. 

“Maybe one days my pops can take us all out to the opera, Catra too.” Bow announced, rather proud of his idea.  _ Oh, Catra would hate that. I’d hate that.  _ “Hey, you okay Adora?”

“No, not really.” She rubbed her arm. It was hard to be okay when hovering in the forefront of her mind was the image of Catra’s betrayal at being told she’d chosen a measly shift at the bakery over being with her. 

“Look, Catra’s a grownup Adora. Is that what you’re worried about? Yeah, I can tell by your face. That’s your ‘I’m worried about Catra’ face.” He laughed and she scoffed almost jokingly, “She’s not gonna run out on you just because of this. No one’s leaving you, Adora.” Those calm brown eyes stared into hers like they were attempting to tame the ocean within hers.  _ How does he do that? Jump right to the heart of it like it’s nothing?  _ This was not the first time they’d discussed how many of Adora’s anxiety issues stemmed from being abandoned over something circumstantial she perceived to be her fault.  _ Well this  _ is  _ my fault. Okay, well it’s at least under my control. And just because he’s met my abandonment issues does not mean he’s wrangled with Catra’s.  _

“Yeah, well you’re not the one that has to tell her,” she whispered, her smile twisting into a frown. 

Bow nodded in understanding. “Do you want my advice?”

“Don’t forget about major plans you have with family so you don’t inconvenience your friends?” Adora didn’t bother holding back the snark even with the slight smile on her face. The way his eyebrows flew up and his baby browns widened didn't make her guilty for a second. Proud, but not guilty.

“Um, okay, yeah, I deserved that,” he chuckled, “but I was going to say about Catra. Why don’t you just call her right now while I’m still here? That way I can verify your story  _ and  _ take the heat.”

Adora bit her lip. It wasn’t a  _ terrible  _ idea. Reasonable, sensible, that’s what Bow was, what his words were, and that’s what most of his plans amounted to. Yet she couldn't ignore a certain and  _ familiar  _ bad feeling that had settled like a heavy weight on her shoulders. Looks like the seed of doubt that the night would be perfect, that they’d survive it, was beginning to blossom into a weed. Reaching for her phone, she took a deep breath. Bow nodded in affirmation. Oh if he only knew she wasn't just nervous about the phone call. “Okay, let’s do this. Oh, and by the way if she curses you out, I’m going to laugh by the way. Really hard.”

“Uh, thanks for the warning?”

Adora’s fingers hit the phone icon by Catra’s number. It was the first in her recents; they’d been talking every night on the phone, sometimes until one of them fell asleep, since Adora layered her vacation time with her two weeks and they hadn’t seen each other since Catra asked her out. The other woman wasn't so lucky to take time off like she was. To hear Catra's voice would usually bring Adora happiness and legit giddiness, but now all she felt was a sense of dread. 

“Oh, I should probably tell you,” Bow spoke up right then, breaking Adora's concentration, “Angella was planning to call Glimmer tonight, so it might be a rocky night.”

_ Oh my God are you KIDDING ME? Now on top of not going out with Catra, I have to deal with Glimmer's never ending family issues?  _ “Hmm, thanks for the warning, Bows" she replied with a too casually cool tone. "Hey, how much would a five star restaurant and movie put you out, just wondering?”

Adora’s glare met Bow’s puppy dog guilt eyes before they both glanced to the ringing phone, that bad feeling seeping deeper and deeper into Adora’s stomach.

_

“Dumb fucking shoes. This is what I get for letting Scorpia take me clothes shopping.  _ Again _ .” Gritting her teeth, Catra cursed through them as she almost yanked the little zipper thing straight off her right shoe. Damn thing was stuck! How had thirty five dollars got her such a cheap fucking pair of shoes?

The overrated and frustrating heeled boots with the dark maroon leather and black platforms were supposed to match the also dark maroon top- she was  _ not  _ calling it a blouse- and dark, not black jeans, Scorpia helped her pick out at Target the other night. No, the word wasn’t help, it was  _ bully.  _ As much as a softy like Scorpia could bully someone by “gently” shoving them back in the dressing room and practically giving her one bitch of a migraine by dumping a  _ massive  _ pile of clothes over the dressing room door and onto her head while saying "Ooh, try this one on too! And this one! Oh this is  _ so _ your color!" Of course Scorpia thought every outfit was the epitome of perfect; Catra just thought they were the epitome of too damn tight and too damn itchy and this was the motherfucking epitome of wasting time. 

Of course whenever Catra tried to call it quits or threatened a saleswoman or threatened Scorpia after getting caught trying to sneak past her, the older woman would force her back into the fray by bullying her the worst way possible: Scorpia would play the Adora card, the “don’t you want to look nice for Adora” move, the “Adora will probably dress it up really nice and look pretty, so I don’t think showing up in your pajamas, oh, oh you were joking,” line. And God damnit! It always worked! Screw Scorpia for knowing exactly what buttons to press/being a genuine caring friend who was helping her when no one else would. Catra would go back in the dressing room and try whatever super impractical outfit on, then come out for Scorpia before subjecting it to major criticism. 

“Really, a mini skirt, Scorpia?” Catra asked, having swung the dressing door open in nothing but the tight leather skirt and her fraying bra. The scandalized look on the Target shoppers’ pathetic faces who just happened to be in the clothing section? Classic. Ha! She waved to them and winked as they hurried on by.

Sitting on the bench outside her dressing room, Scorpia dropped the Food Network magazine she’d found in intimates and shrugged. “Well you didn’t give me a lot to go with, wild cat. And it’s not like I  _ know  _ Adora or what she would like-”

“Yeah, I’m working on that, Scorp,” sighed Catra. They’d been over this a  _ thousand _ freaking times. Scorpia could meet Adora- and all her friends, that was important to her- once they got Friday night out of the way. Cupping her boobs, Catra swung back to the mirror and cocked her head, staring daggers into her own reflection.  _ Would Adora be into this? Ha, probably. It does make my ass look pretty amazing.  _ Too fucking bad an amazing ass and a turn on for Adora was not enough to make her wear a god damn leather mini skirt. Catra slammed the door shut, stripping out of the stupidly tight thing and back into her underwear as she heard Scorpia pick up the magazine.

“So what’s next?”

“This is like the hundreth fucking outfit, Scorpia! I’m getting tired,” she sighed, falling back on the door and letting the coolness soothe her skin. She hated this god awful place. Three mirrors, three different angles to see the monster of an eye sore. Oh, and there was her back, too. Look at that, Weaver was still ruining things for even a decade later! “Can you just tell me what was wrong with the outfit  _ I  _ picked?”

“Nothing was wrong with it, Catra, but don’t you, I dunno, think it was  _ too  _ casual?” Scorpia’s voice floated through the door. 

Folding herself in half, Catra stuck her head out from under the door just so her roommate could see the way she narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s a  _ casual  _ date.” Scorpia just shrugged and went back to “oohing” and “ahhing” different tex mex recipes.  _ Am I- am I not taking this seriuously enough? ‘Cause I know Adora is probably way ovethinking this… fuck at this rate I’m gonna be so underdressed and she’s gonna get it in her head that this isn’t as important to me as it actually is.  _ An importance that scared that shit out of Catra.  _ Damn it! _ Leaning her shoulder into the door until it folded, Catra pulled on a curl as she tried again. “Look, I just- I just don’t want to look like I  _ care  _ too much, you know?” Her words fell soft.  _ Gross. _

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

Catra and Scorpia were at the Bright Moon target fifteen minutes until closing. As Catra wrestled with outfit after outfit and also wrestled with the fact she cared  _ so  _ much, about the date, about Adora, that it almost knocked the damn wind out of her and Scorpia purused the kitchen section for whatever type of fancy ass crockpot she’d found in that magazine, it was a fucking wonder they didn’t leave unsuccessful. Their trip put Catra out 95 dollars, but Scorpia assured her-  _ after  _ she paid and then almost fainted- that it was worth it.

“It’s ‘cause you care, wild cat.”

Now sitting on the edge of her bed trying to get her damn shoe to zip, Catra was wondering why the hell she  _ had  _ to care so much. Her hands were shaking as she handled the zipper, her stomach was in knots, she was sweating for God’s sake! And all she could think was that this date was practically suicide. Jesus, she’d never been this nervous about  _ anything! _

Or maybe she just hadn’t been this happy about anything in a hell of a long time, too busy drowning in a mixture of tequila and self pity waiting to let herself die. Wow, she was a fucking headcase. Adora was going out with her- the mean, rude and reckless messy ghost of a functional human being- because?

_ Jesus fucking Christ, Sylvia Plath _ , Catra rolled her eyes in the back of her head at her own idiotic edginess,  _ it’s one drink. And like, maybe dinner? Leave the overthinking to Adora, you’re not half as cute when you do it.  _ Grunting as she sank her teeth into her bottom lip trying to get this stupid, shit quality zipper to close, Catra caught sight of the tattoo on her wrist, freed from the leather gloves her roommate ‘bullied’ her into leaving home for the night. “Ugh, what are you looking at, Mami?” she growled at Selena the Cat. Selena didn't respond.

Yanking one last desperate time, Catra was halfway through rage-squeaking “MOTHERFUCK-” when right beside her, her ringing cell phone put a premeditated end to Catra ditching the shoes completely and erratically by setting them on fire in the kitchen sink. Adora’s name glowed on her screen, sending a strange mix of euphoria and anticipation, (curse Adora for bringing out her inner dweeb) and the grueling pain in Catra’s shoulders drained away. “You really just can’t wait a little longer to see me, can you Princess?” she laughed as she answered the phone. 

Adora’s reply was soft and practically knocked Catra sideways in a way that reminded her of the time Entrapta got her dirty little hands on fireman’s hose for an "experiment." “I hate you.”

_ The fuck?  _ Catra pulled away from the phone just to stare wide eyed and pissed at the damn thing, hoping it carried through the signal.  _ Well hello to you to Adora. _ “Uh,  _ excuse  _ me?”  _ God, she better not be drunk again- _

“Oh, oh no! That wasn’t for you, sorry I didn’t know you heard that,” answered Adora, leaving Catra less relieved and more confused. What the hell? “ _ -that  _ was meant for Bow.”

“Ouch, Adora.” Sure enough, Adora’s sunshine and rainbows roommate was on the phone with her, throwing all of Catra’s sultry suggestions- she hadn’t been thinking them up all day in case Adora called, no! What? Like hell she would ever do something that romantic and  _ gross-  _ out the window when she also inadvertantly tossed her dumb shoes. Adora’s friends: three, Catra: 0. God, at this rate she was gonna start pulling clumps of curly hair out. 

“Uh, okay…” She was still super fucking confused. They were calling her because?

“And  _ Bow  _ has something to tell you.” Adora’s voice had a bite to it that sent a shiver up Catra’s spine. Only dumbass horny her missed the actual meaning of Adora’s words entirely, too busy wondering what it would get to make Adora talk to  _ her  _ like that.

“Wow, way to throw me under the bus Adora.”

“I have every right to throw you wherever I want! Now, I think you have something to tell Catra about why we can’t go out tonight.”

_ What?  _ Had Entrapta “accidentally” turned the fireman’s hose on her again? ‘Cause they had to be fucking with her? 

“Yeah, uh, Catra,” Bow started in a wobbly voice, “look, my dads are taking me out tonight to the opera-” how she still managed to laugh despite her frozen and panicked state “-that wasn’t nice- Ouch! Adora! Fine, don’t look at me like that. Listen, this isn’t Adora’s fault but because I can’t work tonight at the bakery, I need her to cover for me.”

_ Of course. Of  _ fucking  _ course. _

“So, uh, she can’t go out tonight.” 

Catra’s grip on the phone tightened until she swore she heard glass popping. What a surprise! Perfect Princess Adora can’t shove it to her friends for one god damn night to be with her! And her dumb friends can’t let her go! Seriously, these people had a dependency problem and it was starting to get in the way of Catra’s ability to keep calm. But good to know she spent close to a hundred dollars on an outfit she thought Adora would like after a night of subjecting herself to white people at  _ Target  _ and looking at million cooking utensils the apartment didn’t and would  _ never  _ need only for their date to go up in flames because  _ somebody more important  _ needed her.

“Please don’t be upset!” Bow practically begged and pleaded in a tone that almost made her vomit when she waited a whole ass minute to respond. Catra couldn’t roll her split eyes far back enough in her head.

“Yeah,” her voice was like acid, “we’re a little past that, Sir Rainbow. Tell Adora we’ll talk later-”

“No wait!” 

“Catra-”

“God  _ damn _ it, Bow! I told you this would happen! She’s never gonna even speak to me again! Way to ruin this for me.”

Catra’s thumb hung over the red icon. She meant to pull the plug on this useless, insulting phone call the second Adora made  _ Bow _ drop the bombshell she wouldn’t see her tonight when something in her voice and in her words made her hesitate. There was no trace of that reprieve or pride Catra trained herself to listen for so she could sniff out when people were playing with her head again. No, Adora sounded hurt and defeated and  _ genuinely  _ angry...and it threw Catra.

For like, a second, her characteristic pride stopped her in her guilty tracks. This  _ was  _ Adora they were talking about. Miss Take On Everyone’s Problems. No wonder Bow went to her to give up her night and not any of the other spoiled brats- sorry, nice and somewhat tolerable brats- who leeched off of her. She was too much of an easy target.  _ God, we gotta work on that. _

“I’m still here, Adora,” Catra’s mouth moved without her permission, “and I’m listening to whatever dumb reason Bow wants to give me.” 

The, soft small gasp of relief on the other end shook Catra’s heart.  _ Wow I’m glad I didn’t hang up.  _ “Yeah, yeah, okay,” breathed Adora, “Bow, you wanna…”

“Sorry about this, Catra. I promise this  _ isn’t  _ Adora’s fault, it’s completely one hundred percent on me, so if you’re gonna be mad at someone I’m the one to curse out. My pops bought non-refundable tickets and this is really important to them, but I know how important this is to you and Adora, so... I’m willing to pay for your make up date. Especially since I forgot about the opera being tonight and all. But yeah, anywhere you want!” 

“Hmm… anywhere?” Catra asked, running her tongue over her teeth. Yeah, this could work. Bleed Adora’s friends dry for bleeding her dry. And fucking this up for them,  _ again.  _

“You two really are made for each other.”

“Whatever, date ruiner,” Adora shot back and Catra swore she fell just a little bit more in love.

Cackling, Catra added to the dog pile, “Yeah, this is officially the worst cockblock your friends have pulled, Adora.”

“Am I done here? ‘Cause I gotta go ice my head from bus wheel tracks.” Bow squeaked his demand to both of them, sending Adora giggling. Catra went ahead and assumed Adora had done the dirty work of kicking him off the phone call, because when she was finished laughing her voice was the only thing left. 

“I really am sorry about this, Cat-”

“ _ Stooooop  _ apologizing, I swear to God.” 

“Oh, right.” Adora mused, “It is pretty annoying.”

Catra just shook her head. “No that’s not- Adora, we’ve been over this before. You don’t have to apologize for every fucking thing, I get the picture. And besides, it’s not like this was gonna be the last time one of us had to cancel.”  _ That’s a mature thing to say, right? God, I’m turning into Scorpia, all I need is four new crockpots… _

“Last- last time?” stuttered Adora, blossoming a warmth in Catra’s chest. How dare she be this fucking cute? “You mean you wanna do something like this again?”

“Yeah, I was… I hoped so.” Catra wasn’t sure if her quiet answer made her vulnerable and open or just fucking lame. ‘Cause it seriously felt a little too heaving on the last one. Even if she stood by every word of it.

She wasn't sure if it made her weak or strong to want a  _ real _ relationship with Adora. But she was dying to find out.

“Oh- uh, good, me- me too.”  _ Good to know I can reduce to her a stuttering puddle. It's adorable.  _ “So, um what are you gonna do tonight instead of you know-”

“Go out with you?” she finished the sentence just to take the burden off Adora’s shoulders. “I dunno, probably work I guess. Since that’s what you have to do. Except I actually get to throw things at super fucking annoying Bright Mooners instead of entertain them as my friends.”

Judging by Adora’s melodic laughter- damn her for being so fucking irrestible- Catra figured she got away with that snide, but  _ super _ deserved, comment. “Maybe you should swing by if you get a break. I maybe we could, I dunno, try and salvage the rest of the night.”

“You sure Purple Creme Puff won’t blow a cupcake if you play hooky from the register?” Now  _ that  _ would be fucking hysterical. 

“I just have to be there, it’s not like anybody cares if I slack off.”  _ ‘Cause that’s what all your friends are doing? Ha!  _ Okay, she wasn't sure if she could get away with that one, so for once in her life she was smart and kept her damn mouth shut.

Catra hooked a curl on her finger and brought around to her face. “If you say so, Princess. I’ll text you.”  

“Sounds good. Um, listen… I, uh, wanted to tell you-”  _ Huh? What? What's going on, Adora?  _ How was that awkward start to a sentence so  _ her  _ and yet so weird at the same time?

But if Adora was going to say something she was sure leaning into the long pause and finally it was Catra who broke the strained silence. “What is it, Adora?” Fuck, her stomach was practically in her throat. After they work through the apologizing thing maybe they should both work being less damn cryptic. The words ‘wanted to tell you’ could be completed a hundred million ways and she could only think up, like, ten that were good. 

“Uh, nothing. It’s nothing. I’ll see you tonight. Bye Catra.”

_ Nothing? Huh? What?  _

“Bye Adora.” 

_ Well that was… weird.  _ Catra thought as she tossed her phone aside. What could Adora even want to talk about that turned her into the pretzeled version of herself with extra anxiety instead of salt.  _ Oh yeah, literally fucking everything. I can’t believe I’m attracted to her.  _ Except no, Catra knew the exact reasons she was attracted to her. The pretzel twisting thing was just a perk. “I guess I can take these stupid shoes off, fucking finally-”

“No, hey, what are you doing? Don't take off the shoes! They cost you so much money, Catra!”

“Yeah, I remember how much they cost, Scorpia,” deadpanned Catra, turning her head to look at her roommate who just decided to barge in on her in the open living space where all her shit just happened to be. “Adora cancelled the date, she has to work tonight. So can I please take them off now?”  _ And never ever put them on ever again? _

Catra didn’t wait for even a nod of approval from Scorpia before she was tearing them off her already blistering feet and tossing them as far away as fucking possible. Next, she was stripping out of this damn itchy blouse and reaching for her ragged Queen t-shirt she changed out of not even thirty minutes earlier. What a fucking waste all her work for tonight had been. She may not have been upset with Adora, but she seriously wished the universe would take a break from its very busy schedule and stop screwing them over. Hadn’t they had enough, for God’s sake?

_ And are we even out of the woods? What if the worst  _ isn't _ over? _ Catra wondered as she threw on the t-shirt and moved to freeing herself from her new jeans. Stepping into her old black ones, torn and worn just the way she liked them, Catra almost tripped on them as she put them on while for the first time getting look at what her friend was wearing. “What the  _ fuck… _ did Big Bird throw up on you, Scorpia?”

Glancing down at the affront to nature dress she was wearing- hey it didn’t look terrible  _ on  _ her, it just was terrible to begin with- a mixture of yellow party streamers with some green and red thrown, literally thrown on, Scorpia gaped in realization. “Oh this? This is my costume for our Cinco de Mayo party! Yeah, Marshmallow made it for me.”

“Then Marshmallow needs to go to jail,” said Catra, folding her arms. 

“Huh.” Scorpia twirled around, “Does it look that bad? I really thought it looked cool, like I’m the pinata!” she explained, hitting the word  _ way  _ too hard. 

Catra decided to ignore that and focus on looking for her keys in the mess of clothes and paper applications littering her mattress. “What, are the other queens gonna hit you with sticks ‘til candy falls out or something?”

“I mean, I sure hope not.” Scorpia laughed. 

_ Aha, there are the little fuckers!  _ Swooping up her keys and phone, Catra turned around to find Scorpia and her pinata vomit dress an inch from her space. “Hey, this is okay with you right, wild cat? The party? ‘Cause I know you’re latina and this is kinda cultural appropriation-”

“Ugh, for the  _ last  _ time, Scorpia!” growled Catra, throwing her arms up. They’d had this same conversation about the same lame party a million fucking times. Apparently, like their talk about personal space, it also wasn’t sinking in. “I don’t care about the party! Maybe if Hordak and Weaver hadn’t  _ stolen _ me from my family and robbed me of my culture and heritage then maybe, but oh  _ wait,  _ they did! So I don't give a flying fuck! At least not anymore! Just- go have fun okay? One of us should have a good night.” Catra sidestepped her in an effort to reach the door, trying not to linger on the concerned look on her friend's face. She meant what she said. Scorpia had volunteered the free time of her past couple of weeks helping her with Adora; Catra could happily turn a blind eye to this party- especially when she was wearing actual party supplies. As for the part about Hordak and Weaver, just another bruise on her soul she’d never, ever forgive them for. Or stop paying for.

Catra wasn't some religious hippy, but  _ God _ , she prayed those two monsters burned in hell.

“Who’s ready to calculate all this _paarrrty?”_ another shrill voice yodeled, exploding from their bathroom door. _Okay so one roommate is a pinata and the other is a fucking mariachi. Great._ Emerging in another terrible ensemble of green and red and white streamers this time glued to a purple set of overalls, Entrapta burst in holding one of Scorpia's new crockpots in her oven mitts/gloves.

Yeah, Catra didn't even want to know what the Crock-Pot was doing in their bathroom. 

“Jesus fucking  _ Christ _ , promise me after this you’re taking away Marshmallow’s glue gun and Party City Rewards member card!” Scorpia's "piñata" excuse of a costume was one thing, but the way it looked like Entrapta's hair and the Mexican flag fucked and had the ugliest baby? That was crossing the line as an offense to anyone with eyes. How the hell was Entrapta going to get all of that silly string out of her pigtails?!

"Catra! Scorpia invited me to the Cinco de Mayo party with all her drag queens! Isn't it such a fascinating tradition? I'm going to come home with so much data!" Entrapta, happy as a clam could be with junk in her hair, waddled over to Catra, the streamers waddling over with her.

_ Oh my God.  _ It was all Catra could do not to absolutely double over laughing as Entrapta struggled against her own costume and the weight of the crockpot. She  _ was _ trying to be better. And she guessed, in response, the universe was just throwing things that were super fucking weird her way? As like a test? Whatever.

“I’ll admit the costume is not as aerodynamic as something  _ I _ would design, but nevertheless!” Entrapta’s yell of victory collapsed into a whimper as she tried to lift the crockpot, but thankfully for their floor and Catra’s feet, Scorpia swooped in and took the damn thing. “Scorpia and I made Chili Con Queso for tonight! In a strange mixing of cultures, the drag queens have combined the Anglo-Saxon tradition of a potluck with the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo! Ooh, I’m so excited! I can’t wait to catalog all my findings of this unique social experiment! Oh and I hope they have tiny food!”

Chili Con Queso? So _ that’s  _ why their kitchen looked like an effing taco truck had exploded in it.  _ Where the hell was I when that was happening? Was I still talking to Julien?  _

Propping the crockpot against her hip like it was  _ nothing holy fuck,  _ Scorpia explained, “Yeah, Entrapta had tonight off, so I figured I’d bring her along. I’d, I would’ve asked you too but you were going out with Adora. But hey, now that’s she canceled you can come with us! It is kind of a costume thing, you know, us being drag queens and all, but I bet we can whip something up together! What do you say, wanna come celebrate Cinco de Mayo with us?”

“And watch Entrapta dab to some Pitbull remix while you barricade me from the booze? Yeah, that’s a _hard_ pass.” Catra closed her fingers around her keys and stepped into her boots. _Be better,_ her conscience whispered. “But uh, thanks for the invite though.”

“Of course wild cat.” Scorpia smiled.

“Okay,” sighed Catra, “I’ll see you guys later. Have fun at your party-”

“Wait, wait are you  _ working?”  _ Her roommate slid the crockpot onto the coffee “table” and shuffled over to Catra. 

“Yeah,” Catra narrowed her eyes, “why?”

“I’m not sure I’m okay with that, Catra! It’s gonna be dark soon and everyone's out partying tonight! What about drunk drivers? I don’t- I don’t want you to get hit! Or worse?” Her words were a fast and frantic ambush in Catra’s face, leaving her with a strong whiff of chili con queso. Ugh, leave it to the Mother Hen of the three to object to her making some honest money tonight.

“Duh, that’s why I have to go,” Catra shot back, “everyone is out tonight getting shitfaced and they’ll all need an Uber, and that way I can pay my part of the rent. And I can handle a few drunk drivers, Scorp. Besides, everyone in Bright Moon is so fucking lame they’re all probably the designated drivers. Have a little faith, Jesus.” 

With that, she slid past her roommate, grabbing her leather jacket that had been tossed onto the floor and throwing it on, and headed for the front door only to find herself in the space where Scorpia and Entrapta hadn’t replied. Which was so not like them, those two fucking blabbermouths, and it threw her, stopping her in her tracks. Catra looked back, her hand on the doorknob, “Look, I’ll be safe  _ okay _ ?” 

A curt nod from Scorpia and a thumbs up from Entrapta, Catra took her leave trying not to think about what she’d rather be doing than dodging drunk drivers and cleaning vomit out of the backseat of Marshmallow’s toyota. She forced herself not to think about Adora, or the way she would laugh when Catra made a low blow commenting about whatever lame ass fancy fruity drink she’d ordered. And damn it, Catra would  _ not _ be thinking about the way Adora’s lips would probably taste like that fancy fruity drink.

Adora’s friends: 4. Catra: 0.

_

“We’re here, Sav’s Bar and Grill.” Catra’s customer service voice spoke for her. Of course the two college dildos making her backseat smell like weed were too engrossed in whatever pointless conversation about hockey they were having to hear her. Sighing, she snapped her fingers, kicking her seat and met their now scared and wide eyes in the rearview mirror. “Hey! I  _ said  _ we’re here.”

It took them a second to get their heads out of their asses, but soon enough they were scrambling out the door, mumbling to each other, “Was she kinda rude?” 

_ Oh, you wanna see rude?  _ But the Bright Moon boys had already slammed her door and she watched, scowling, as they met up with a group of friends waiting for them in front of the restaurant.

Sue her for being in a shitty mood. It’s not like her night had been aye-okay. First, the date she’d actually been looking forward to was scrapped because Bow’s family’s love of the opera- weird flex, but so on brand for Adora’s friends- needed everything to stop for it and now here she was driving other, ungrateful people around the city so  _ they _ could go on dates. God, irony was  _ such  _ a bitch. 

Pulling away from the golden light of the bar and grill’s sign, Catra turned and merged back onto the road ( _ still  _ under construction for some stupid reason; seriously, what was the point of redoing the whole shoulder?) left alone with her thoughts for the first time in like a week. Today was actually the first night she’d actually bothered to work and hold up her end of the weight when it came to rent and the rest of that never ending stack of bills on their kitchen counter. Hey, she had an honest excuse this time around! No major migraines or nightmares or meltdowns, thank fucking god. No, Catra had spent the last couple of days applying herself for once, drowning in applications and organizing interviews and then meeting people at a freaking coffee house of all things to show them the portfolio she managed to throw together. Luckily for her strained patience as well as her teetering sanity, the head artist at a shop she’d applied to up on the upper west side, a guy named Julien, didn’t make her spend more than twenty minutes seething in her own discomfort while picked apart her work before actually discussing what it would take to get hired there.

Catra, who’d literally been not five seconds away from headbutting the steering wheel, was now smiling like an idiot at her next thought. God, she couldn’t  _ wait  _ to see the shocked look on Adora’s face when she told her she was going back to art school. And that she’d applied  _ without  _ Adora’s help, or anyone’s help really, unless you counted that lady from the administration who she'd been back and forth on the phone with. Of course, that announcement was  _ supposed  _ to happen tonight, but now Bow was gonna pay for that to happen at the most expensive place Catra could find to match the news.

Okay fine, it wasn’t anything super effing fancy. Just a couple of classes at East Bright Moon Community College she signed up for the summer to buff up her art skills. Now that she was about to be a published illustrator, Catra figured it was time to get her ass in gear, learn the techniques and get the degree. That way She Ra could have the best fucking illustrations and not single other YA novel, or any novel, would come close. 

And because Adora deserved the best Catra could give her. 

_ And I was going to tell her that tonight,  _ Catra grit her teeth, flicking her brights on and trying to concentrate on staying on the damn road instead of spiraling on to the dirt shoulder four feet beneath her that the city hadn’t even bothered to block off.  _ Along with like one hundred other fucking things.  _ Catra leaned back onto the seat, foot on the gas pedal, following the road until it took her to the upper west side where Adora was waiting for her at the bakery. 

_ Like how Adora practically saved my life by coming back and having the balls to stick around. How she kept trying to know the real me even after I shut her out and pushed her away. How she didn’t run away when I screamed at her- ‘cause I did that a lot, maybe too much-for abandoning me or when she saw my scar.  Or what a freak I really am. Jesus Christ, was I really that stupid and shallow enough to believe that Adora had become like every other selfish rich airhead in this hell city, when really she’s kind and beautiful and patient and deserves so much more than to be afraid all the time? _

_ And now I have to tell her all that and hope she doesn’t cry,  _ Catra groaned,  _ and making Adora cry is like asking to be fucking burnt again by a water heater.  _ “Shit, what if  _ I _ cry?” Between telling her the truth and all the good news that had come their way- and  _ her  _ way this week- she wondered if she might get to experience what it was like to happy cry for once. But anticipation quickly dissipated into disgust, Catra’s stomach twisting with embarrassment over something that hadn’t even gone down yet. Crying? In front of somebody? How about just admitting she was weak as shit right then and there?

_ God damn it Hordak?! Are you ever gonna leave my fucking head? And we were almost done with this fucked up “curiosity killed the cat” line. Fuck!  _ Hitting the steering wheel, Catra looked up into the empty darkness that stretched before her. 

“Uh, when did it get dark?” Guess spending all that time in her head distracted her from the setting sun. Sheesh. 

_ Okay, so avoid crying. Or don’t, I dunno. Hey, maybe I should just tell Adora about how I need a degree to actually get a job, and how getting a degree takes just about as long as-  _

_ BANG! _

Catra would never finish that thought. Before she could even cry out, a force threw her from her seat and into the hard surface of the unrelenting airbag, shocking the whole car, a sickening sound rippling through the air as metal crumbled like paper in her fist.  _ Not this again, shit! _

Something- someone- had hit her from the side.

_ “What about drunk drivers?”  _ Scorpia’s far away voice was just another sound ringing around in her ears, _ “I don’t- I don’t want you to get hit! Or worse?”  _

Fucking Bright Moon. She couldn’t even count on these rich parasites to uphold their don’t drink and drive attitude. Guess no matter where Catra was in the world, she’d be fourteen years old, so fucking far out of her league and losing control of a spiraling car.

And just when life was just starting to be worth sticking around for.

Acting on instinct, Catra gasped and made a desperate grab for the steering wheel that had been torn from her grasp. She had to- she had to stop the car, but oh God. Fuck! The car was already spinning, tipping, beyond her control. They were going over the edge. That stupid fucking edge of the shoulder Bright Moon City Works had never bothered to pave.  _ Jesus, grab the wheel Catra! _ If she could just reach around the stupid fucking airbag- 

_ WHAM!  _ The car’s grip on the concrete gave violently and with it, the tipping car. Her teeth drew blood from her tongue as she braced from the hard, unforgiving impact of their nosedive and she let the sound of metal meeting ground be the only sound against her drumming heartbeat. The ground fought back against the steel, sending a whole fucking earthquake through her spine, igniting every nerve like a match to gasoline. Yet, even through the fire of her pain, she could begin to feel herself going numb, as if the fire was traveling farther and farther away until it was nothing but a fun, stinging warmth.  _ Shit, shit, shit, shit! _

Catra, struggling to breathe against her seatbelt and through that ambush of smoke, knew-  _ knew-  _ she was fucked. Again.

And the darkness the creeped in the blurry edge of sightline? Yeah, she expected that this time around. So tasting blood on her lips and again, not knowing the source, Catra closed her eyes as permission for the darkness.

Then, she let go.

_

“Well, Spinerella and Netossa have got me catering one of their clients’ weddings this weekend- yes, Mom, I cater all of their weddings, but they only have  _ one  _ this weekend. Mhmm, yeah I know they’re a giant source of revenue, but I promise it’s not like they’ve found another caterer. So, can you just tell Aunt Casta that we can go see her the weekend  _ after  _ next? What do you mean you have to go to a conference that Friday? I thought that was in June!” 

Chewing on her lip, Adora listened to the phone call emanating from the kitchen, Glimmer’s shrill voice traveling in and out of her ears without making much of an impact. It was all she could manage not to full on dissociate sitting at the bakery’s empty- and sticky- tables and staring at her dimly lit phone screen. Huffing, Adora locked the phone, waited three seconds, and unlocked it.  _ Still nothing!  _ She’d been doing this for an hour and a half.  _ What is going on? She’s not usually like this. _

“Yeah, Mom, it’s not like I’m super looking forward to it either! It’s not exactly fun having all our Filipino relatives bombard me with questions about why I don’t have a boyfriend!” groaned Glimmer, her complaint echoing through the bakery.

“So Mermista, I was thinking you and I could go parasailing this Sunday afternoon?” From behind her, Sea Hawk smoothed over his words as he tried to win over his not-girlfriend.

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock.  _ Nothing! _

__ “Hmm, that doesn’t sound terrible,” mused Mermista, apparently willing to be won over that night, “Yeah, it can be like a celebration of  _ finally  _ convincing my dad to let us stay in Bright Moon for the summer.”

“Huzzah!”

“But we’re taking  _ my  _ boat, mmkay? I will  _ not  _ being having a repeat of last time.” 

“Those conditions are easily agreed to, my lovely Mermista! We shall have a merry time as any! Perfuma, pray tell, what are you doing this weekend?”

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock.  _ Stay calm. Just stay calm. You don’t know anything is wrong. Everything could be fine for all you know. _

“Well I was thinking about going down to the community garden for a few hours. They have this program for at-risk youth as well as low income families that helps them learn how to garden. I go down to share my expertise, plus it’s such a lovely, positive environment,” Perfuma responded. “Maybe you could join me, Frosta? I know you have some volunteer hours you still need to get in.”

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock.  _ Hey, maybe she’s just ghosting me. I did cancel on her tonight. _

Frosta brushed her off, “Nah. I gotta write that paper about Romeo and Juliet and then my D&D group is having a campaign on Sunday. We’re trying to break our all time record of fourteen hours-”

_ But she said she would text. And she always,  _ always  _ does. _

“Mom- mom, listen to me! I know Aunt Casta thinks she can cook but let’s be honest, you didn’t have to go to culinary school to know that those noodles are  _ way  _ undercooked!”

_ What if something’s wrong? _

“Mermista, perhaps we should try breaking  _ our  _ record?”

_ Nothing’s wrong. _

“Yeah, you’re gross.”

_ ‘Cause why would something be wrong? She would text if something was wrong. _

“I- I meant parasailing.”

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock.

“You can do  _ that  _ and parasail at the same time?”

“No Frosta!”

_ Unless something was really,  _ really  _ wrong and she couldn't text me. _

“Dis _ gusting!”  _

“Why would you ever think of something so R-rated, you simpleton child?”

“ _ Mom!”  _

_ Something’s wrong. _

But just as Adora’s was about to reach for her phone to check once again, she froze like a deer in the headlights when the telltale scraping of the chair in front of her forced her to look forward, away from her screen for the first time in over thirty minutes. Bow was taking a seat, still dressed in his tux. But his bow tie was undone. “What are you still doing here?” she asked, squinting as he folded his hands on the table top. Together they had walked from the apartment to the bakery and Bow had opted to wait outside while Adora went in, thinking about how it should've been the other way around. Had he really spent all that time waiting out front? Maybe, but it's not like Adora was paying enough attention to her surroundings, choosing rather to channel that energy into worrying and fretting. For all she knew Bow had been right in front of her the whole time. 

“My dads are running late.” Bow shrugged, trailing a finger through the sticky substance- most likely melted frosting left by Frosta or Sea Hawk and left unclean by Adora who chose to sit and stare blankly at unresponsive text message chain instead of working the shift she was covering for- and letting out a long dejected sigh. 

“Oh.” Adora’s eyebrows flew up.  _ That  _ came as a surprise. It wouldn't have been as shocking if it was just George coming to grab Bow considering there was at least a 75% chance that man would get distracted and be two hours late, but with Lance’s utmost respect for sticking to an airtight schedule, Adora assumed they’d be running an hour early, not late. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. I just got off the phone with Lance. It’s only traffic, he says there was like a big accident on Thaymor Street. We’re probably gonna miss the show.” He mumbled the last bit, mouth twisting into a small frown as he fell back.  _ Accident? Thaymor? That’s on the way to the bakery. What if-  _ “Sorry Adora. It looks like I ruined your date for nothing.”

“That sucks for you too, Bow, I’m sorry you’re not gonna get to hang out with your dads.” Despite the hollowness of her voice, Adora meant what she said. After all, she knew a thing or two about plans cancelled at someone else's hand. 

Again, Bow gave a despondent shrug before replying. “You know I lied when I said this was just supposed to be some random celebration?”

“R-really?”

“Yeah,” Bow nodded. She hadn’t seen him this downtrodden since- since getting turned down by Columbia, which was seven months ago! He wasn't someone to react with such fervor to his negative emotions, wasn't one to be easily put down by failure or disappointment. And that meant Bow wasn't the only one who underestimated the importance of what the other scheduled that night. The longer Adora watched the tired lines of his face, the more her beating heart constricted. “My dads were actually the first people I told about finally getting accepted, before you and Glimmer. They were just so psyched! And proud of me… They wanted to celebrate by taking me out tonight. I didn’t lie about the forgetting part, it totally escaped my mind. Hey, maybe I should get a planner like you.”

Smiling, albeit weakly, Adora shrugged in response. “I’m happy they’re proud of you, Bow. They’d be pretty blind not to be proud of you.”

“Thanks, Adora,” he beamed while she struggled to breathe. “Hey, they’re actually gonna take me out for some ice cream down at the new place on Third. Do you wanna come? You can bring Catra. George and Lance would probably really like her since she’s an artist like Julien.”

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock. 

_ “There was like a big accident on Thaymor Street.” _

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock.  _ Oh God. _

Everyone was out tonight, since the holiday was just one disrespectful excuse to party and drink, so the logical part of Adora pressed that  _ anyone  _ could have been in that accident. And she might have taken the bait of that reasoning if hadn’t been for the bad feeling that had attached to her after the phone call and had grown to a full on shadow, hanging over and possessing her to be near obsessive about checking her phone when Catra didn’t text her within the hour. Or the next. Or the hour after that. 

_ What if Catra was in that wreck?  _ the shadow whispered,  _ it seems to me that if she was, you’ll have lost your chance to speak your monologue to her forever and you’ll have no one left but yourself to blame… _

Adora swallowed, clutching shaking fingers into sweaty palms.  _ No! There’s no facts or evidence or anything to show Catra got hurt. This is just a feeling… a feeling I seriously need to be back on meds for. _

_ Really Adora, after all this time you still don’t trust me?  _ As Adora tried to take a deep breath, it was like the lingering shadow turned to smoke in her lungs.  _ If she was okay, don’t you think she would’ve bothered to call, or text? It seems like the least she could do… _

Lock.  _ One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.  _ Unlock.

“Adora?” Oh, right. She was talking to Bow. Maybe… maybe Adora should just focus on him. Yeah, he could be what grounded her in this uncertainty. “You okay? You look pale. Well, paler than usual.” He cracked a grin at her, entertained by his quip. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I mean, I haven’t heard from Catra all night and she was supposed to text me. That’s- that’s weird right?” Adora forced her voice to steady. Because if her friends could really see what an anxious wreck she was underneath the surface, if they got a glimpse of the way she overreacted to every unknown like a child cowering from the monster in the closet, if they knew the strength was a facade, well that wasn’t a shame she was ready to face. She wasn’t ready to be passed off as silly or paranoid or broken as she truly was. She wasn’t ready to fall through the cracks. 

_ Yeah, that’s it. I’m overreacting. Catra is fine, she just forgot to text me. And, and Bow’s gonna tell me that, and I  _ trust  _ him to tell me the truth. _

_ Oh do you? Now  _ that’s  _ silly,  _ the shadow mocked.

“Well maybe she’s just super busy?” Bow suggested just like Adora knew he would. Only the assuredness in his voice and the calm look in his eyes did not chase the worry from her chest. “I mean, since it’s Cinco de Mayo and everyone’s out? I bet she’s getting a bunch of ride requests and probably just hasn’t had time to look at her phone. Do you… do you think she’s still mad at you for canceling?”

_ Mhmm. Or dead.  _ “I guess it’s possible.”

Bow opened his mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by Glimmer entering the foyer. “Okay then I guess it’s settled, Mom. We’ll won’t go see Aunt Casta and the rest of dad’s family because we’re both really busy and we’re  _ both  _ chickening out. Can’t believe it took us-” she pulled away to glance at her phone, “-three hours and fourteen minutes to come to that conclusion but whatever.” Bow and Adora exchanged a knowing look, both trying their hardest not to laugh even despite their conversation concerning Catra’s vanishing. “What’s going on at the hospital? Anything interesting?”

_ Hospital? If someone got in a crash bad enough that they wouldn’t be responding to phone calls or messages, they’d go to the hospital right? And Glimmer’s mom would know that, right?  _ Alright, she cracked her knuckles under the table, time to get her facts and prove this bad feeling nothing more than a premonition of bad news past. Time to punch this shadow in the face.

Perking up for the first time since her date got canceled, Adora called out to her best friend over the counter, “Hey Glimmer, put your mom on speaker. I- I want to see how she’s doing!”

“Uh, um okay?” Shrugging, Glimmer tapped her screen. “Okay Mom you’re on speaker. Say hi to the bakery.”

“Hi Ms. Angella!” Bow cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, causing Adora to flinch.  _ Does he have to be so loud when I’m four seconds from having a panic attack?! _

“Oh, well hello Bow. I heard you were accepted into the grad program you wanted, congratulations! I was going to send a gift basket to the apartment, if that’s okay with you?” The static cut through Angella’s announcement. 

Bow’s eyes lit up at the mention of a present and Adora almost laughed. “A gift basket? Heck yeah! Thank you so much, Ms. Angella!”   

“You know you can call me Angella, Bow,” she replied as Glimmer made a disgusted face, “Oh, is Adora there? There’s a gift basket for her on the way as well. I wanted to tell her congratulations on landing a literary agent! Also, I’ve been talking it up to many members of the senior staff and as a result of my pestering- oh, and Adora’s talent of course- we’ve agreed to buy a whole set to donate to children’s wards all over the city!”

If Adora was going to get a break from her shadow of emotional upheaval at any point during the rest of the night, that was the moment. Like a burst of light, gratitude and excitement chased away the darkness. Angella was going to do that for her? She was really going to help all these kids? That is, if they wanted to read her book, but still! And to think, she and Angella did  _ not  _ get along at first. Talking sleep deprived Adora armed with a fire extinguisher versus in the middle of losing her husband to leukemia Angella.  “Oh my gosh! Thank- thank you Angella! I- I really appreciate that, more than you know.”

Adora never had a mom, not really, not in any way that mattered. Two people tried to take over the role when the one person it belonged to ceased to exist, even in Adora’s deepest memories. Only one of those two really wanted it, to the point where she would’ve killed for it, and the one who never truly wanted it ended up dying for it in a sick, painful turn of events. Without a maternal figure to guide her in life and to be proud of her accomplishments, Adora never bothered to think about what it might be like to have one  _ be  _ proud of She Ra.

But she imagined it might feel something like this.

“You’re welcome, Adora. I hope you two enjoy your gift baskets, I spent quite a bit of time picking them out myself.”

“Ugh Mom, can you stop harping on my friends?” Glimmer whined and threw her head back. As she did so, Bow whacked Adora’s arm playfully, mouthing, “Gift baskets!”

“Alright, alright. And here I thought you wanted me to be more involved in the lives of the people you spend all your time with.” Glimmer rolled her eyes.

“No, I said  _ less,  _ Mom. Less!”

“Of course you did, Glimmer.”

“Ughhhhhh-”

“Anyways,” Angella continued over her daughter’s groaning, “I believe you wanted news of what was going on at the hospital?”

“-ghhhhhhhh-”

“Hospital?” Again, Adora perked up, this time with so much force she hurt her neck, “Yeah, what’s going down there at the ol’ hospital there, Angella? Anything- anything weird? Or- or terrible?” The more she stuttered through her words, the drier her mouth became. Bow narrowed his eyes in her direction.  _ Oh, so  _ now  _ he picks up on me freaking out! _

“I suppose tonight has been more exciting than it usually is, it being a holiday an all. Mostly drunk tossers who can’t handle their liquor coming in for, how do I say this, keg stand related injuries. I wish I could feel more sympathy for those frat boys, but they are also burying me and my staff in paperwork. And vomit. My staff more so than me, thank God. Is it rather terrible of me to admit that? There’s also whispers someone hacked into our system, but it’s still working, so I’m going to halt my belief on that.”

“Oh, is that all?”  _ Okay, college boys doing stupid, regular college boy stuff. Not as bad as I thought. See, Adora? You’re just overreacting- _

“Yes, a few car accidents.”  _ Fuck.  _ “There seems to be a few drunk driver incidents, unfortunately. One so bad the car was destroyed beyond ruin and the body unrecognizable. Isn’t that heartbreaking? I don’t even think it was her fault, poor dear.” 

_ “What?” _

The ground didn’t crumble beneath her feet, Adora knew that, but she also knew it was no longer holding her. Nothing was holding her anymore. Nothing but the shadow seeping into her bloodstream, seizing her lungs and crushing her windpipe with unforgiving abandon, rocking her stomach and beating her heart until it was the only watery sound in her faraway ears. Surrendering to its grip, its bruising and blackening hold, Adora fell to her chair, only to remember the photographs tucked neatly away in one of Mara’s boxes. A crushed car up in a blaze of tragedy. Unrecognizable bodies burnt beyond the memories of the things they left behind.

_ It’s happening again… and this time it’s my fault.  _

“Do you- Angella can you tell me,” Adora blinked hot tears of her eyes.  _ Shit! Pull it together Adora! Now is not the time to fall apart and cry!  _ “I just need to know the make and models of the cars in the accidents.”

Angella responded, albeit confused, not that anything beyond her words registered to Adora. Adora was too busy lost in what had quickly become a bad dream in the blink of an eye, the stinging sensation of pain traveling up her arm as she pinched herself in some desperate attempt to wake up. “Uh yes, I can look of course, it will just take me one second to access the files on my computer-”

“Why do you ask, Adora?” Glimmer spoke her words slowly, her words hesitant and her eyes narrowed. 

Adora tried to tell her as she opened her mouth to stutter and trip over air. Tried to find the words that would encompass what she had done, what she had let occur.  _ I think I got Catra killed. I should’ve just gone out with her tonight, I should’ve fought harder, but I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Glimmer! And  _ this  _ is my fault.  _ But the only thing in her throat was the shadow’s smoke, tightening its chokehold until it brought tears to her eyes. 

“Catra… Catra was supposed to come the bakery tonight.” Bow took over when words failed her, “And she was also supposed to be texting Adora since their date got canceled, but she hasn’t… no one has heard anything from her. My dads told me over the phone that there was a  _ really bad _ accident on Thaymor-”

“Which is on the way to the bakery.” Glimmer’s eyes widened. “Mom, Mom?! Did you find the cars?”

“Uh, yes I’ve got the incident reports pulled up right now. Who- who are you looking for-”

Adora didn’t even wait for Angella to finish. “Was there a 2013 Toyota Camry in any of the accidents?” 

“Let me see,” every second Angella mulled over was another eternity in Adora’s reality and the longer she was trapped with her shadow holding her hands behind her back, “yes, I’m afraid. It appears those involved in the accident were brought in about an hour ago. The report is vague- written by Jeremy of course it’s vague- but it looks as if the car took quite a hit.”

“Damn it!” Adora stomped her foot on the ground.  _ Think, Adora, think god damn it! _ As if she was mocking her, Catra’s voice took over her thoughts,  _ if you fall apart now, it’s all over, okay?  _ Mental Catra was right; all she had to do was find out if Catra was in the worst wreck of the night and then she could relax. Piece of cake, really anxiety-inducing cake. But it was better than spending the rest of the night- the rest of her  _ life-  _ staring at her phone and wondering. Wondering what could have been. So, with a new found resolve as if love was pulling on her shackles of smoke, Adora threw up her head, her ponytail bouncing off her neck and asked, “Okay, okay, does it say  _ who  _ was involved in the accident?”

“Er- no. Gosh, I thought the paramedics were working on making these more detailed.”

_ Fuck! _

“Well you can look up Catra in the system right?” Glimmer chimed in, “Like if she’s been checked into a room! Or- or in the ER! And if she’s not, I guess…”

“Let’s not think like that just yet!” interrupted Bow with shout just desperate enough to match the panicked look on his face.

“Uh, what’s going on?”  _ Oh  _ great _ , I forgot about Mermista and company.  _ Adora ignored the crowd forming around her and Bow as she walked closer to the counter, focusing all her attention on Angella’s voice coming from the speaker.

“What’s her last name?”

“Catra’s been in a car wreck.”

“Catra Jauregui.”

“We think!”

“You  _ think  _ her name is Jauregui?”

“No it  _ is- _ ”

“Catra got in a car wreck? But she still hasn’t redone my tattoo!”

“Adora, Adora, I can’t hear you! You said her last name is Jauregui? Are you  _ sure? _ ”

“ _ Fake  _ Tattoo.”

“Oh I knew something bad was going to happen today. The energy I’ve been receiving is just  _ so  _ negative-”

_ Oh my God at this rate Catra  _ is  _ going to die and not from the wreck but from old age if this conversation continued!  _ “Hey! Listen!” Adora shouted, slamming her fist on the table and shocking the room quiet, “Anyone who isn’t Angella is now barred from speaking, nod if you agree.”

Mouths slightly agape, her friends did as they were told, allowing Adora to return to the  _ incredibly  _ urgent life or death phone situation.  _ How’s that for keeping it together?  _ “Angella, are you still there? Her name is Catra Jauregui.”

“I’m still here, but I can’t for the life of me find your friend in the system. I’ve tried several spellings but I’m afraid it looks like she might be…” Angella trailed off as if she was too distraught to finish her sentence. 

Adora’s knees buckled under her and her hand caught her weight on the edge of the table, Glimmer’s mother’s words still ringing in her ears.  _ No… _

_ See Adora? I told you so,  _ the shadow laughed, back in her mental space and back in her throat,  _ you hurt people around you no matter what. It’s always the same, they hurt, they  _ die  _ because of you, and what do you do after that? You come running back to me. _

“Sea Hawk I need your car keys and I need your car.” Barely two seconds from crumbling, disintegrating into the mess of panic she truly was, something forced through the smoke and shadow and looked Sea Hawk in the eye. Because as long as Catra could  _ still  _ be out there- they didn’t know why she wasn’t in the system! Maybe Catra was alright and had been discharged! And if she needed to lean on that hope until she had truth than that’s what she would do- then she could press forward. She wasn’t just going to sit by and lose Catra again.  

“Uh, well of course Adora.” He blinked. “What for?”

Adora ignored the looks of concern and doubtful worry her friends were exchanging, replying with a voice of steel. “Because I’m going to the hospital. I have to know Catra is alright. If I’m overreacting or if I’m going crazy-” she stopped to breathe, only to be met with the scared, wide eyes of the people in front of her, “-then well, I’m crazy! At least this time I can say I tried and that I wasn’t a coward.”

“What does she mean by that?” muttered Perfuma.

“Here Adora, it’s the sea green chevy on the left side of the street-” The second the cold feel metal hit her palm, Adora pushed past Sea Hawk and set out on a warpath straight for the front door, nothing but adrenaline powering her through the fear, through the pain. 

_ You see that! I’m not running back to you! I’m running to her. And I’m done with you! _

_ Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure… _

“Wait, Adora!” 

“What, Glimmer?” Adora spun on her heel to find her friend throwing off her apron and maneuvering between Perfuma and Mermista.

“I’m coming!” she shouted, running to her side, “I won’t let you do this alone, Adora.”

Tears pricked her eyes-  _ No! No crying!-  _ and her voice cracked as she looked down at her friend, “Thanks Glimmer.”

“Wait for me, I’m coming!” Flailing his way to their side, Bow yelled out and was soon taking Adora’s other hand.

“What about the bakery?” Perfuma asked. Ugh, they didn’t have time for this! Catra could be hurt! Or worse, very much worse, but she wasn’t about to leave any of that to her treacherous imagination. Still, Adora’s hand was  _ right _ on the door. 

And then so was Glimmer’s, pushing forward. “Just don’t let it burn down! Close, oh and just tie Sea Hawk up if you have to!”

“Oh, we can  _ definitely _ do that.” Mermista’s response went over Adora’s head as she shoved the door open and didn’t look back.

_ I’m coming, Catra.  _ Adora thought, running into the warmth of the dark night surrounding them. Sea Green Chevy, she had to find a Sea Green Chevy. Why Sea Green- it didn’t matter! Nothing mattered! The  _ only  _ important thing was that Adora got to Catra. On time.

“Here!” Bow hollered after them, waving them over to the car he’d found. A Sea Green Chevy- with flame decals? Really Sea Hawk?- just like the engineer had described. “Let me drive. I’m the fastest.”

“Wait, I’m a much better driver than you are-” Glimmer started protesting.

“Uh, guys! This is time sensitive!” Adora broke up the argument before it could begin, opening the door and sliding into the back seat. “Bow, you- you just drive. Glimmer, you navigate. C’mon we have to  _ go _ ! Go!”

As Bow and Glimmer assumed the seats in the front, Adora closed her eyes and told herself to breathe.  _ Breathe,  _ her shoulders tensed and her fingernails dug into the sweaty skin of her shaking palms,  _ breathe. In and out. _

One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi. 

_ I’m coming, Catra. Just hold on. _

_

_ “Are you ready to go Adora?” _

_ “Yeah, here’s-” Adora hobbled down the steps of the front door, the large suitcase Mara gave her this morning to pack bouncing off her leg, “-here’s my suitcase!” She lifted it up to give it to Mara, who stood twisting a strand of hair between her fingers, leaning on the station wagon she’d shown up in a week earlier.  _

_ Mara took the suitcase, her arm jerking back and her face morphing into surprise. “Why’s it so light? Did you really pack, Adora?” _

_ “Of course!” Adora didn’t want to make Mara upset. Mara asked her to pack all of her things. So, wanting to make the best impression on her Mom- wait, Mara didn’t want her to call her mom, just her ‘guardian’- Adora did as she was told. She folded all her clothes meticulously (she found that word in a book the other day) and placed them as neatly as possible in the black suitcase Mara gave her. It was easy to do fast because none of the other children were around to bother or distract her. Mrs. Weaver was also away. She’d gone to see Mr. Hordak, leaving Adora to worry she was in trouble with him. Again. _

_ Mrs. Weaver had begged Adora to stay with her. Begged her on her knees not to leave. Part of Adora wanted to stay there in Arizona, with her, with the other kids, with Catra. Moving away seemed so frightening, only she didn’t want to say that out loud and let everyone see what a chicken she was. But Mara said that Mrs. Weaver wasn’t a good woman and wasn’t fit to take care of her. Mara said that was her job. That’s why she pulled her out of school a week ago and told her she wanted Adora to move in with her, why she brought her along to all those meetings with attorneys and social workers. She was getting adopted! By her godmother! She still had a family that wanted her! Well, part of a family that is. _

_ So, excited to start her new life, Adora packed her suitcase and met her at the car just like she was told. _

_ “That’s all my stuff!” Adora beamed. Mara stayed stiff as she inspected the suitcase.  _

_ She looked down, narrowed her eyes, and pursed her lips. “This is all you have?”  _

_ “Yeah, I packed all my clothes and my journal and my pencils too. I just left my blanket since Catra likes to use it. She  _ hates  _ the cold, even though it doesn’t really get cold here. She says it does, though.” _

_ “Hmm, I’d be surprised if that woman was even keeping the house properly heated,” Mara said to herself, glaring in the direction of the foster home. “Alright, let’s go then.” _

_ Mara turned to open the door, but Adora froze. They couldn’t leave now! She hadn’t said goodbye yet. Catra was still at school, and because Mara wasn’t sure when they state would hand Adora over, she only said they’d be leaving any day now. She hadn’t said today! “But the bus isn’t here yet.” _

_ “What?” she asked, cocking her head like Adora had grown a second one. _

_ “The school bus. It gets here every day at 3:15. And- and Catra’s gonna be on it. I just have to say goodbye to her and then we can leave.”  _

_ Glancing at her watch, Mara told Adora, “Honey, it’s close to 3:30. We have to go before Sharon gets back-” _

_ “It’ll just be a couple of minutes!” Now it was Adora who was begging to stay. “I promise-” _

_ “Adora, we have to  _ go.  _ As soon as we’re out of the county and I hear from the court, I’ll let you call Catra, alright?” Mara’s icy blue eyes looked down at her and Adora swallowed.  _

_ “Yes ma’am.”  _

_ Adora got in the car. Because she was obedient and did as she was told. She didn’t want to cause any trouble. Hands shaking, Adora clipped her seat belt. Mara was letting her sit upfront with her. Mara did nice things like that, gave Adora nice things, unlike Mrs. Weaver. Mara was nice. For the most part. _

_ Mara started the car and Adora turned to look back at the house she grew up in. Well, she wasn’t full grown, but it’s where the growing started, right? Mara said moving away would help her get over all the bad memories of the house, like the water heater pipe bursting. But there were good memories there too. Memories Adora didn’t want to forget.  _

_ “Since you don’t have a lot of clothes, or a lot of anything really, would you like um, to buy some new things? We can go to a store once we get out of town and you can pick out whatever you want. How does that sound Adora?” _

_ “Mmm.” Adora pressed her cheek to the seat as she looked out the back window, the street winding away as they drove down it. She could hear the school bus stopping at the corner, could just barely see the rusted yellow hood as it braked. Catra was on that bus. Catra didn’t know she was leaving today. Adora was supposed to tell her when she got home, when they said goodbye.  _ If  _ they said goodbye.  _

_ “Adora, honey? Adora, look forward. There’s nothing left for you there now. Adora?” _

_ Adora knew Catra was back there. But she turned away anyways. She looked forward. Because she did as she was told.  _

_ “It’ll be alright. Adora? Adora?” _

“Adora?”

“Huh?” Adora, dizzy with the sick sensation of hysteria, opened her eyes to find the red and swollen eyes of her twenty four year-old self staring back at her, instead of the reflection of that terrified, cowardly eleven year-old girl she had been. No longer was she traveling away in the wooden confines of Mara’s station wagon- God, Mara never really grew out of that death trap did she- but in the sleek, marine themed interior of Sea Hawk’s. 

“Are you okay?” Glimmer squeezed her hand gently, turned towards her in the passenger seat. Glimmer had been holding her hand? “You weren’t responding to anything we said.”

“Yeah, sorry. Just… lost in a memory I guess.” Memory. Guilt. A flashback. Her own mind terrorizing herself because at her core she just wasn’t a person worth forgiving. One of those things. 

“Was it… was it about Catra?” asked Glimmer. Again she squeezed her hand. This time Adora squeezed back. 

Wasn’t everything lately? Catra coming back into Adora’s life may have been one of, no possibly the best thing that had happened to Adora in a long,  _ long _ time. And she was happy, really  _ truly  _ happy, for the first time in a long time. But like most things in life, that happiness came with a price. A price Adora paid in guilt, in tears, in pain that just never seemed to end. Catra brought to light feelings Adora had tried pack away and hide, had tried to run away from, and now she was having to face them head on. 

Adora was having to face the reality that she had  _ left.  _ Left like some coward desperate to hide her face, changing the course of both her life and Catra’s life forever. Catra had changed, adapted, rose from the ashes of the flames that had dared to burn her and had emerged this beautiful woman. Catra had become someone  _ worthy.  _ Adora had just stayed a coward.

“I still remember the day I left Weaver’s in Arizona. Isn’t that...weird?” Adora asked in a hoarse whisper, hugging herself. 

“Not really.” Glimmer shrugged. “I mean, I still remember the day my dad spilled marinara sauce all over himself at that homeless shelter when he brought me to help him. I was like, maybe eight?”

Adora’s gaze fell to her lap. “That’s a  _ happy _ memory.” 

“Yeah, it was. I’m guessing this wasn’t?”

“I know it sounds weird because looking back I  _ know  _ the foster home was hell, and it messed me up so bad, Mrs. Weaver messed me up so bad. So it should have felt good to leave, to get out of there and never look back, just like Mara wanted. But I- I-” Adora stuttered, her eyes shutting as she tried to stop the tears, her grip on Glimmer’s hand tightening.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Glimmer’s other hand came to rest on Adora’s, a silent, comforting gesture of validation.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Catra, Glimmer. Mara just made me get in the car even though I wanted to wait for Catra to get home, but the stupid school bus was running late. Mara told me to get in the car and not to look back. So I did.

I- I remember looking in the rearview mirror and seeing the bus stop on our street. And then, as were driving away, I saw Catra get off. She must’ve seen the car, seen us- me- driving away and she started running after us. Her scar was still healing so she couldn’t run very fast, which she  _ hated ‘ _ cause it made me faster for once, but she still… she still chased us all the way down the street. I close my eyes, and I can  _ see  _ her standing at the corner just crying and screaming at me. All from the mirror. I couldn’t even turn around and look her in the eye. And now… it’s happening again. I’ve lost Catra because I was a coward.”

_ A coward who never truly said how she felt. A coward who didn’t try harder to fight for her and be with her. _

“Adora, this isn’t your fault.” Glimmer replied with a voice like iron, “The bus was just late that day, and this accident? That’s all it is, an  _ accident.  _ You didn’t make Catra go out driving tonight-”

“But if I had just gone out with her-”

“-She might still have gotten hurt, Adora! Because car accidents happen all the time! You can’t control every single bad thing that happens,” this was the loudest anyone had spoken the whole time they had been in the car, Adora realized as Glimmer was on the verge of yelling at her, never once breaking eye contact between them, “and that’s ok! The more you blame yourself for things outside of your control, the more pain you’ll be in,  _ trust  _ me.”

Adora caught her breath as she studied the look in Glimmer’s eye. It was certainty, an absolute that she found herself wanting to believe. That this wasn’t on her. That those steps she could have taken to prevent this might have led to a more disastrous outcome than the one they were already in, or never changed the outcome at all. But how could Glimmer just  _ believe _ there was no one to blame? How could she just roll with the punches or ignore that impending sense of doom that was threatening to crush her, suffocate her with ‘what-ifs’ and ‘maybes” if she dared to let her guard down?

Okay, now that she was asking herself that, thinking through the logic that left knots of unmovable tension in her back and teeth grinding even her sleep...maybe there was something to what Glimmer was saying. 

“We’re here,” announced Bow, and Glimmer, sighing let go of Adora’s hands. “Told you I could get us here fast.”

“Ugh, now is  _ so _ not the time Bow.”

“Did that car smell kinda weird to you guys?”

Entering the hospital and searching the first floor all became a blur to Adora: the flagging down of confused and clearly overworked nurses, the blank searches yielded by those working the desk, the three phone calls Adora snuck away into tiny corners to make, hoping that this time Catra’s voice would be what she heard on the other end of the line. It all just seemed too familiar, a repeat of deaths from yesterday. All the waiting and all the confusion woven into the clean stagnant smell in the air. All the pain branded in the dull patterns of the chairs in waiting rooms. Blink and she’d be sixteen again, waiting for Mara to leave chemotherapy whilst losing hope that this round would be the  _ one  _ that fixed everything _.  _

Blink and she’d be eleven, running through the halls calling for a nurse’s attention when the button in Catra’s room didn’t work even after she pushed it 23 times.    

And now she was here, running through the halls once again at the sound of Angella’s voice, approaching them from the direction of the ER. Glimmer and Adora had searched the emergency sector as far as they were allowed only to come away empty handed. No one named Catra had come through there. This result, this answer, was the same one they were given no matter what floor, what nurses’ station. According to every bleached and scrubbed corner, Catra wasn’t here.

That might have been worth an inch of hope if Catra was answering her phone. 

“Angella,” Adora skidded to a clumsy halt, sliding into her open arms. Behind her, Bow and Glimmer caught up, panting and leaning on their knees, their first real break since walking through the automated doors. “Did you find her, is she here?”

At first the hospital administrator didn’t reply. Instead, a small ghost of a smile appeared on her pink lips and she brushed a piece of hair that had escaped from Adora’s ponytail behind her ear. Adora couldn’t help but lean into the warmth of her touch, her heart beating away the seconds. But she knew it couldn’t be good. Angella was seldom motherly and comforting to her  _ own  _ daughter. This caress was bittersweet. “Adora, the news I have isn’t good news.”

“What? What is it,  _ what  _ happened?” 

One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.

“I talked to Jeremy, the paramedic who arrived at the crash scene,” exhaled Angella.

“And?”

“His descriptions match Catra’s. A driver who was a young woman, but he couldn’t tell me any more.” Angella placed both her hands on Adora’s shoulders. “With Catra in none of the rooms and nowhere in the system, I’m afraid that it is safe to assume she…”

One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.

“Is what, Mom?” Glimmer asked, approaching them from the side. 

“There is a woman in surgery right now and her condition is critical. She’s unidentified, unclaimed as it were. I believe...I believe that’s Catra. Based on the notes in Dr. Lake’s file, I don’t think she’ll last longer than the night. I fear she has no more than an hour or two, at the most.”

“No…”

“Oh God, Mom are you  _ sure? _ ”

Adora never heard Angella’s answer. There wasn’t much to hear in a reality that was slipping away quicker than she could make a grab for it. There wasn’t anything in that moment. Palms pressed to her eyes, Adora backed away from Angella, from Glimmer. She would’ve run down the hall if her limbs had let her, would’ve run away from this awful place, from this awful thing she’d done, would’ve run and wouldn’t have stopped until she outrun the numbness, the pain. She’d run to her death, but it would be a deserved one. Instead all Adora could do was stumble backward into a chair against a nearby wall and hope it held her as everything around her fell. 

She’d lost her. Adora had lost Catra again and this time, she wouldn’t be coming back. Just like Mara wasn’t coming back, just like Razz. Once again, words of wonder and love would just become another one of hundreds of thrown out speeches Adora never got to say.

_ I never got to tell her just how much she meant to me. Why didn’t I just SAY it when I had the chance, damn it?! _

_ Because you’re a coward,  _ the shadow was back, back to wait until the numbness no longer sustained her so it could wipe the tears off her face itself,  _ you’ve  _ always  _ been a coward, Adora. _

“Adora?” Somewhere in the distance, beyond her lack of feeling, Adora could hear Bow call out for her.

Exhausted of death and finally numb to the pain, Adora’s voice cracked as she replied, maybe to him, maybe to no one. “I did it again.”

“Did what again?”

One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi.

“I broke another promise.”

_

The last twelve weeks of Bow’s life had been a total rollercoaster of crazy ups and downs. Endless shifts at the bakery, endless rants from Glimmer about all the things wrong with the The Last Jedi, grad school applications, grad school rejections, the crazy and wild antics of his friends and even his brothers. But the part of those hectic months where Bow got to watch two people fall back in love again? That was an up. Definitely an up.

Bow always thought he and Adora were a lot alike for a ton of reasons, especially in the sense that no one knew much about their families and pasts. Because neither of them wanted to talk about it. Over the years they’d known each other, Adora and Glimmer learned about and then met most of Bow’s family, and put together the story of why he’d been hiding them- and hiding  _ from _ them. Adora was a tougher nut to crack. Suspecting trauma, and  _ lots  _ of it, Bow wasn’t about to take a hammer to her shell just because he was curious about her history in the foster system. She had every right to put a lock on a closet full of skeletons. As much as he wanted to help her- and believed he could help her by just giving her an ear that would hear her- he wasn’t about to step out of his lane and do  _ more  _ damage.

So he’d wait until Adora was ready. If she never was, he figured he could live with that. 

And then one night, Catra showed up at their door with a drunk and vomiting Adora on her arm. Well, back, that is where Adora was leaning. As soon as Adora was sober, bits and pieces of her dark and actually pretty tragic past began to emerge. Parents killed in a fiery car wreck (allegedly murdered as the cherry on top), eleven years in the foster system under the care of psychologically abusive caretaker that progressively wrecked her ability to form connections because of that insecure resistant attachment at work! And not one, but  _ two  _ dead caretakers. Yeesh! Bow clearly had underestimated what a survivor his friend was. And what a badass. He would’ve thought that having Catra back in her life would’ve triggered a truckload of uncomfortable emotions. She  _ was  _ having flashbacks. But she was still the strongest person Bow knew, he was beginning to realize.

Catra’s presence in Adora’s life changed just about everything, and scared as he was of Catra in her biker chick get up with teeth and claws to match, he soon began to see the attachment they’d formed- sorry,  _ reformed- _ was a lot more than just a platonic bond of sorts. Nah. These two were  _ soulmates. _

Of course everyone but Catra and Adora could see it. Bow wasn’t proud of leaving Adora out, but he spent a lot of time in Glimmer’s room as they tried to hash it out and form some stealthy plan to shove them into each other’s arms. They never came up with anything concrete. He knew it was getting bad when those conversations followed them to the bakery, and then  _ Seamista  _ was starting to throw in advice. Thank  _ Heavens  _ Adora got that idea to go to the park. To be honest, he didn’t think she had that in her. Once they were going out, these secret meetings and gossip sessions (not his idea! Talk to Glimmer and Mermista!) they were having behind their backs could come to a discreet end, lest they all meet a bitter end at Catra’s knife Bow  _ knew  _ she was hiding somewhere in her Rosa Diaz combat boots. 

But by the time Adora and Catra started going out, or they were about to, Bow was too wrapped up as he’d just gotten into grad school and was spending most of his time, for once, talking to his family. He let himself get distracted when he was supposed to be supporting his friends.

He believed he was being selfless when really he was just being selfish.

“Guess it’s poetic justice I ended up spending my night at the hospital instead of instead of in box seats at  _ Tristan and Isolde. _ ” Bow sighed as he bent down with a plastic cup and pushed the blue lever of the water cooler.

After Adora collapsed into the chair outside the surgical suite, Glimmer came to her side and Angella left to try and learn if there was any new information. “And perhaps I’ll figure out who this mysterious ‘hacker’ is that supposedly infiltrated our computer system. Between us, I suspect it’s that male nurse Ronald spreading rumors again because he’s bored.” She forced a smile before turning away, the sound of her heels echoing off the hospital’s white walls.

Adora didn’t notice Angella leave. Actually, she wasn’t responsive to anything anybody said or did. The world could’ve ended in bombs of fire and smoke right before their very eyes in that moment and Bow genuinely believed she wouldn’t know. Because her world had already ended.

_ “I did it again… I broke another promise,”  _ Adora had whispered, the light fading from her eyes as she spoke. Bow had never seen her  _ so  _ pale. Not at Mara’s funeral or Razz’s wake. Adora had spent her whole life losing things and Bow figured it never got any easier. But he was looking at a  _ ghost  _ sitting in that hospital chair, not his friend and roommate. For some reason this tragedy had turned porcelain to stone.  

“No, Adora.” Squeezing her cold hand, Bow told her, “This isn’t your fault.” 

_ It’s mine. _

Feeling a little bit more than useless, Bow offered to get her some water and left her in Glimmer’s care, dragging his feet all the way across to the other ward where he managed to find a water cooler stationed by a pair of vending machines. It was nice and quiet up there. A nice place to try and focus one’s busy thoughts. 

This was the highest up the hospital floors they’d made it to; the three of them scoured every floor, looked at every name tag on every room, searched at every nurses’ station. Besides the fifth floor, which was the maternity ward (“And this is  _ exactly  _ why I’m never having children!” Glimmer squealed when the elevator door opened to echoes of pained screams down the whole hall and she hit the  _ Close Doors  _ button until it almost broke) they’d been pretty much everywhere. It was on the sixth floor they met Angella pacing a little faster than usual, a grimace on her tired face, by what he thought might be surgical suite. 

Standing by the water cooler was the first real moment Bow had in all that searching. It was the first moment he’d been alone in, well, hours to digest and process everything that had just gone down, but the news of the car wreck was les taking hours to absorb and more hitting him like a bullet to the chest. 

Catra was just…  _ gone?  _ No one had come to claim her body at all? There was nothing- no one- to save? It just didn’t make any sense!

Why hadn’t the hospital contacted Catra’s two roommates? Why hadn’t the hospital contacted  _ Adora? _

Were they really expected to bury Catra after all of this? To just take her body and go home? Were they really supposed to just  _ accept _ that she had died? When she was just on the brink of being with Adora, when the publication of She Ra was just around the corner?

“I should’ve just let her go on that date,” Bow scolded himself as he stared down at the unmoving cup of water in his hand. He could’ve said no to his dads! Or given the ticket to Frosta or Perfuma! Or even some random stranger! And then he could’ve rescheduled, told them he was thinking about his other family too. Upholding his word like the man they raised him to be. They would have understood! 

Right?

Maybe Bow was indulging in that selfishness again- after all, he did say he was bringing Adora back some water- maybe he was just trying to help his body after running through five floors of hospital, but he drank out of the little cup that was  _ supposed _ to be for his friend, crumbled it up, and tossed it in a nearby trash can. It was gonna be a long night. 

“Nice three pointer, Bow.” The crumbled paper cup dove into the center of the trash can. Not even that could make him feel better. Nothing but a miracle could at this point.

Then as he bent down to grab another cup, this time definitely for Adora, Bow heard the beautiful, exquisite voice, coming from the direction of the vending machines, of someone he hadn’t heard sing in  _ years _ .

“Well I often think of the happy times we spent together, and I just can't wait to tell you that I love you, I gotta hold you right- no wait,” the singing came to an abrupt stop, “those aren’t the right lyrics Scor-”

“Scorpia?!” shouted Bow in surprise, whirling around from where he stood at the water cooler.

And straight into strong arms full of bags of chips and vending machine apple pies as the woman holding of them yelled equally as loud, “Bow?!”

The next couple seconds pretty much went down in disaster. Having shocked her- and also, run  _ into  _ her- Bow’s intrusion caused her to drop all her vending machine feast onto the floor, sending them both scrambling down there and bonking their heads as Scorpia insisted she could get it, it was no big deal and Bow insisted he’d bumped into her, it was the least he could do. Twenty packs of sun chips, four sticky cinnamon rolls, and fourteen apple pies later, safe and sound back in her arms, Scorpia and Bow helped each other stand up, giving Bow the opportunity to say what he’d been  _ absolutely  _ dying to.

“How have you been?!”

“Oh me? I mean I had a little too much chili at this party I was just at, but other than that, I’m good. C’est la vie, you know? Wait, that’s not spanish...” Scorpia trailed off in a whisper.  _ She’s… good? C’est la vie- WHAT? Her friend was just in a fatal car accident! Is her dress  _ supposed  _ to look like Beyonce’s?  _ “Hey, how’s Emile? I haven’t seen him since he left the company, I hope he’s okay.”

_ Maybe she’s in denial. Processing Catra’s errr… accident Kubler Ross style? Okay. Can’t really blame her for that. _

Brain glitching just the slightest, Bow closed his jaw and mustered up a reply .“Uh- yeah, Emile’s great. He, uh, he just co-authored this paper with my dad- George- about the history of drag queens in the western hemisphere, since you know he’s got a lot of expertise in that area. They’re really trying to incorporate more queer literature into Bright Moon U’s library.”  

“Hey, good for them!” Scorpia bumped him on the shoulder.  _ What is going ON?  _ “Man, I do miss having Hella Centrique around. So, do you ever think you’d wanna come by again? Maybe see another show?”

“Yeah, yeah of course Scorpia.” What was he supposed to do, squash her grieving spirits  _ and  _ turn down an invitation to the best drag queen show this side of Bright Moon? “But, um, maybe later after you know, the funeral and all that stuff. I just don’t even know where to start planning! I’ve never planned a funeral before!” he stressed, blinking tears out of his eyes. Wow, it was really hitting him now. His voice never broke like this. “But I know Adora is gonna be  _ way  _ too upset to do it, I mean this happened to her  _ parents _ , and you… maybe, maybe we could do like a wake? What do you think, does that sound good? Do you think she would like that?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure, I guess?” Scorpia mumbled her words and slowly began taking steps back from Bow, a concerned look on her face.  

“Sorry, I know I don’t really have any right to be emotional but I just can’t wrap my head around it! How could something like this  _ happen?  _ I get that it was a terrible accident and that it was nobody’s fault, not really, but I’m like, I’m angry about this Scorpia! And to be honest,” sighed Bow, completely deflating on the spot, “I think it’s my fault Catra is gone.”

Scorpia blinked. “Uh, Bow, what are you talking about buddy?”

“The accident…” he trailed off. Okay, something wasn’t adding up.

“Oh Bow, I’m so sorry. That’s terrible! You know, if you ever need someone to talk to about this or a shoulder to cry on, I’m always here, okay?” Scorpia stepped forward and leaned down, trying to show sympathy over the mountain of vending machine snack food. 

_ Oh no. She doesn’t know. Has no one told her yet?! Wait, why would she just be hanging around the hospital if she’s not with Catra? Hold up.  _ Bow narrowed his eyes. “Scorpia… what are _ you  _ doing at the hospital?”

“Oh I’m just here with-”

“Catra, I cannot  _ believe _ you pulled that stunt with my baby!”

“Oh please, get off my ass Marshmallow!” Bow dropped Adora’s water cup in shock.  _ Catra? She’s-she’s alive?!  _ “For the hundreth time, it’s just a  _ fucking  _ car. You can buy a new one.”

“And if I buy a new one you ain’t ever touching it, you hear me young lady?”

“I wish I  _ couldn’t.” _

Only a couple feet from where he and Scorpia were standing, Bow watched as from a hospital room- one they never got around to checking, he guessed- Catra walked out followed by the Campfire Queen herself, Marshmallow. And while Marshmallow’s massive green wig, red eye brows and lips, and sparkling pink dress that kinda looked like in belonged in a quinceanera combo didn’t really deter him, Bow could definitely say the cast on Catra’s left wrist and the bloodied bandage on her forehead weren’t something he could say he expected.

_ So Catra’s, like, alive?!  _ “I guess this is the miracle…” Bow muttered under his breath, eyes widened and brain still frozen. 

“Hey Catra!” Scorpia gave a shout and waved high in the air. Catra and Marshmallow were four feet away from them, but this was Scorpia. “I got that food you wanted! Sun chips, ‘cause they’re slightly healthier, and I did manage to find something that  _ kinda  _ looks like a cinnamon roll, but the uh- the apple pies are for me.”

The promise of food ripped Catra’s venomous attention from her argument with Marshmallow and she melted at the sight of the snacks, pushing past both the drag queen and Bow without so much as a second glance. “Thank fucking  _ God,  _ I’m starving.”

_ What is HAPPENING?  _ Bow  _ swore  _ he had never been more confused in his entire twenty four years. Catra survived the car wreck, so that was good, and had obviously been attended to by the hospital staff. And yet, she was  _ nowhere  _ in the hospital’s records. How had that even occurred?! 

Bow probably would’ve continued to stand there and let his neurons misfire trying to come up with some feasible explanation, when Catra, half of a flattened, sticky cinnamon roll in her mouth realized he was there. “What are  _ you  _ doing here, Rainbow?”

“Uh…”  _ Learning you weren’t smushed and burnt beyond recognition and aren’t actually in that surgical suite. _

“Yeah, Bow,” Scorpia chimed in from behind, “why are you at the hospital?”

Catra scoffed, “What happened to the opera? Did you come down with a bad case of junior prom? Get it, ‘cause of that horrible tux. Ha!”

Okay, the rainbow thing hurt, and so did the junior prom comment, but the high five she shared with Marshmallow? Now that  _ stung.  _ So much for following Marshmallow on instagram.

_ Why did Adora’s taste have to be literally  _ everything  _ Catra is- wait! Oh no, Adora!  _ “I’m at the hospital because-”

“Oh yeah, you said someone got in a really serious accident.” Scorpia said through an apple pie.

“Accident?” snorted Catra. “Was it Bugs Bunny crashing his piano into your wardrobe?”

“Zing!” Why was Marshmallow being so  _ mean  _ to him? Bow was such a big fan of her work! Ugh, Catra was such a bad influence sometimes.

Before Bow could make this known in hopes at least  _ one  _ of them would lay off, Catra’s face dropped liked she had just realized something horrible. “Wait, did something happen to Adora? Fuck! Bow, Is Adora okay?”

_ Well maybe you would know if you bothered to check your phone ONCE IN A WHILE!  _ Bow wanted to scream that, shaking her by the shoulders  _ hard _ . He really, really did. And he might’ve if the look on Catra’s wasn’t torn with worry and fear, just like Adora’s had been  _ all night long _ , and if he wasn’t just the tiniest bit- okay a lot a bit- scared of her tearing his throat out. 

“Adora is,” Bow inhaled and bit down his lip. He was gonna have to play this differently, no doubt. Neither of them were gonna just take his word that the other was okay on faith. Their traumatized, doubtful souls were gonna need proof. “You know what? I’ll be  _ right  _ back.”

Bow swore his tired legs had never taken him somewhere faster. Granted it was only twenty feet, which blew his mind- Catra was  _ right  _ down the hall!- but he was sliding into the surgical ward like it was homebase.  _ Holy moly, holy moly, holy moly! Whew!  _ Collapsing his hands on his knees, he tried to force out the words “Catra’s alive and she’s in a room across the hall eating vending machine snack food,” but his lungs determined they were on fire (wow, this night had worn him out) and that he was just going to pant for a while, leaving his revelation in ambivalence. 

“Man, I really thought I was in better shape,” he huffed, breathing through the sharp and searing pain.

“Bow, where have you  _ been _ ?” Holding Adora’s right arm to her chest, Glimmer hissed at him. “You promised water like five minutes ago! She’s practically catatonic!” she mouthed the last words. Bow kinda suspected it didn’t matter. Adora was still staring straight forward with her mouth set in a line as if the blank white wall facing her could save her from the bad dream she’d stumbled into. As heartbreaking as the sight of his friend was, Bow knew it was going to be okay. Because he had just the thing to fix it.

“Something- something amazing happened!” he wheezed, before jumped to Adora’s side, grasping her still hand as gently as he could- he was just so excited! Catra was okay!- to pull her out of the chair and back to a reality that wasn’t as cruel as she believed it to be. 

As he did so, the sound of Angella’s heels announced her return. “What happened?” 

“Oh good, Angella, you’re here!” cheered Bow, “You should come too, oh and also Glimmer should too!” Trying as he might to ease Adora out of her statue-esque state, he began to feel the muscles of her forearm tightening just before she started pulling her arm the opposite direction from him. That wasn’t good.

“Glimmer- can you- can you help me? She’s  _ so  _ strong.”

“Go where Bow? What’s going on?” Glimmer asked, standing up and placing her hands on her hips. 

“Just help me!” he squeaked, his own weight straining under the force of Adora’s will. For someone in such a state of grief, she was still pretty stubborn. Okay, then. A gentle touch just wasn’t going to do it. Time to yank.

Sighing and rolling her eyes- the iconic Glimmer Move that meant  _ I trust you but this plan is so not going to work-  _ Glimmer moved and grabbed Adora’s other arm, yanking in tandem with Bow. “C’mon Adora! Bow’s got something- ergh, you  _ are  _ strong! He’s got something to show you, bae!” 

“No!” Adora shouted, the first words that had come out of her and Bow almost dropped her arm. Glimmer’s eyes widened and even Angella took a tentative step back. “I’m  _ not  _ leaving Catra! I’m- I’m staying here.”

“ _ Trust  _ me, Adora! This is good, I promise.”

“I don’t care!” Adora shook her head and bit down on her lip. Wow, she was practically throwing a tantrum. No wonder she matched with Catra so well. 

Sighing, Bow locked eyes with his other roommate. She gave him a curt nod. “Well, Adora, I didn’t want to do this, but blunt force is our only option. Okay Glimmer, one, two, THREE!” 

_ Here she comes! Ha ha!  _ Step one: “Get Adora out of the chair”-complete- step two under way!

“Stop struggling Adora!” Glimmer growled. Okay, so maybe Bow didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be to drag a whole ass person twenty feet and around a corner or how much of a fight that one person could actually put up with two people pushing them forward against her will. Adora whined, strained, and wiggled in their grasp, and it so didn’t help that her attention to fitness plus her extreme emotional state made her stronger than like, a hundred Glimmers and Bows. Bow was worried his grip on her arm was going to leave a bruise. But even when she went completely limp in their arms- “Oh great! Now she’s doing  _ this! _ ” -Bow picked her up and pushed her forward. She’d thank him for this later.

The whole time Bow did have to wonder why Angella never stepped in and helped them. He could hear her following behind and her help could’ve made this whole thing go a lot more smoothly.

“C’mon Adora, stand up!” Once they made it around the corner where Scorpia had now turned her attention to the other vending machine for beverages, Bow encouraged Adora with a butt load of cheer in his voice. Maybe he was talking to her a little too much like she was four years old, but hey, if she was gonna act that way…

“Ughhhhh-”

“Don’t think you’re gonna get out of this conversation with sarcasm, Jauregui,  _ or  _ an injury. I don’t care how badly you hurt that damn head of yours, we are discussing you paying for the damages to my car.” At the sound of Marshmallow’s voice, Adora’s eyes flew open and her toddler impression came to stop. And as she started to stand on her own, Bow and Glimmer let go of her and took a step back. Glimmer, with a smile so wide and shocked her jaw was practically on the floor, looked over at Bow. He winked back at her. A little unspoken _ told you so _ .

“Uh, that’s not fair! It’s not my fault your precious baby ended up in a fucking ditch!” The Best Friend squad may have noticed Catra, but Catra, lounging with her legs splayed in a chair next to Marshmallow, hadn’t just quite yet. Probably because she was forcing herself back into the drag queen’s space. “And may I remind you, you make more money than me!”

“See Adora,” Bow rubbed her arm as he watched her expression. Earlier she’d gone pale because she thought she’d lost Catra for ever. Now she was pale and in shock for a  _ much  _ better reason. “It’s-”

“Catra.”

-

What Adora was seeing in front of her wasn’t supposed to be possible. 

She must be dreaming, she had to be. Because people who died didn’t come back, they didn’t wake up; that just wasn’t the nature of a cruel universe determined to take everything away from her in the most painful and excruciating ways possible, and no amount of hoping, pleading, and bargaining with that universe brought light back to their lifeless eyes. Not when they died of cancer, or old age, or  _ car accidents. _

_ Is this really happening?  _ Adora had asked herself that over and over and over as she sat in that chair, staring at the wall, and begging the hospital to just suck the life out of her like it did with  _ everyone  _ else. This place had stolen Mara from her, and now it was taking Catra too. Maybe if she just offered herself up, sacrificed her own soul, these white walls and sterile tile floors would stop hurting those in her proximity.

_ Is THIS really happening?  _ Adora had asked herself when her friends decided to disrespect her loss and trample all over her grief by forcing her away from the closest she could be to her dying, fading friend and love, promising something wondrous surprise that would heal the hurt. They mocked her and her pain. Catra was gone. She wasn’t coming back. Adora failed her, failed her by not telling her how she really felt and what she really meant to her, failed her by not keeping her safe. No surprise Bow had up his sleeve would change that. Nothing could bring her solace now. 

“Is this really happening?” Adora whispered to herself when Bow stood her before a pair of vending machines and a water cooler, and Catra was sitting there right before her eyes with nothing but a broken arm and a bandage on her head. No charring, no burning, no body melted beyond repair. No alleged surgery. Not even a skin graft. 

_ Catra’s alive? _ No, that didn’t make any sense! The car was totaled, the victim in critical care, her name and file nowhere to be found in the computer system! Adora blinked, trying to find it in her exhausted form not to faint. She’d never fainted before, never even come close, but she wasn’t about to start at this super inconvenient and equally confusing time. Collapsing could be an option when she got to the bottom of this miracle resurrection.

“Bow, you’re back!” a woman Adora didn’t recognize at first ( _ Scorpia? Is that Scorpia? What- what is she wearing? Is she a chicken? Or- or a Mexican Peep?)  _ called out and she flinched, muscles in her shoulders and back seizing violently. “Want a fizzy beverage? I was just getting En- oops, my quarters.”

Bow chuckled at her small goof, stepping away from Adora to help Scorpia pick up the handful of quarters she had dropped in her distracted excitement. Only he was, in a way, keeping Adora standing by steadying her with his hand on her back, and she found herself stumbling into Glimmer when his support followed him.  _ Bow knows Scorpia? What-  _ How  _ does Bow know Scorpia?  _ Just one of a  _ million  _ questions Adora wanted answered at this very second. 

“Jauregui, your entourage is back.” Another woman, dressed in colorful drag and sitting next to Catra, clicked her tongue and wacked Catra’s bandaged face with her manicured hand. Wait,  _ drag _ . Drag Queen. Marshmallow!  _ What is- what is Marshmallow doing here? Why does she look pissed? What the hell is going on?! _

“Entourage, what the hell are you talking about-  _ oh.”  _ Catra hissed, split eyes searching her perimeter before locking with Adora’s ocean ones. “Adora? What- what are you doing here?”

_ I thought you were dead. _

Catra wasn’t looking at anyone else in that moment. There was this look in those split eyes of hers that she couldn’t quite place, a whisper of a question meant for her and her alone, that sent a shiver down Adora’s spine.  _ Why did you come here? _ Catra couldn’t give two shits about what anyone else had to say. Adora knew she only wanted her to respond.

_ Why did you come here, Adora?  _ Adora found her answer in a question, a thought of her own.  _ Why did you follow me out of the bakery and into the back alley? _

But too stunned to speak, too overwhelmed to breathe in the light of this revelation, Adora couldn’t answer. Someone else had to. “What do you  _ mean  _ what are we doing here? We thought you died!” Glimmer, flabbergasted, threw her hands up, robbing Adora of her last physical support, leaving her to falter and fall. It didn’t seem to matter though. Even in the heaviness of anxiety, the weight it cast upon her shoulders, and the excruciating tiredness sinking into every limb in her body, Adora stood strong. As long as Catra was still looking at her, she wouldn’t crumble. She couldn’t if she tried.

“Pfft, I don’t know where you’re getting your information Sparkles, but I think I’m still living,” snorted Catra.

“Christ help us all.” Marshmallow sighed and shook her head.

“Wait, you guys thought Catra died?” Scorpia asked as Catra, eye contact never wavering, never breaking, flipped off thee drag queen without missing a beat. “Is that why you were acting so weird earlier, Bow?”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Bow sighed, “Yeah. We thought the situation was a lot more dire than it actually is. Think we’ve stumbled into a classic case of miscommunication.”

“That’s  _ one  _ way of putting it!” shouted Glimmer as if  _ she  _ was on the verge of hysteria. “Can  _ anybody  _ tell me what is going on?! Mom?”

“Uh, it seems as if Bow was right. Along the way, there must’ve been quite a mix up.” Unlocking her iPad as she spoke, Angella came to stand beside Adora. “Catra’s car-”

“ _ My  _ car,” Marshmallow corrected and Catra rolled her eyes.

“Um, yes, this young lady’s car right here did match the description of one of the cars in the accident, just not the one that was completely destroyed, I assume? And for some blasted reason, I can’t find any more information about that car...For Heaven’s sake this tablet has been acting up all night!”

“Young lady? I like this woman,” the drag queen commented, settling back down in her chair with a satisfied look on her face. 

“So you  _ did  _ get in a car accident?” pressed Bow.

“Uh huh. Stupid Bright Moon is  _ still _ doing a shit ton of construction on Thaymor and they, I dunno, got too lazy to block off the whole shoulder they were redoing for no god damn reason? I don’t know who the fuck hit me, but they came out of nowhere and crashed into me from the side. They were probably drunk, or high or whatever. Who cares?!” Adora couldn’t help but smile if not for a second. This irritation could only mean Catra had been repeating this story all night to paramedics, doctors, and nurses, and she was down to her last nerve. “The car fell into the ditch and _ someone’s  _ airbag broke my fucking arm,” growled Catra, eyes flicking in Marshmallow’s direction.

“Honey, it was the  _ door _ . You hit the door when you drove my car into the ditch.” At some point, when Adora wasn’t reflecting on how she almost lost the most important person in her life, she was going to have to ask about the hostile and kind of confusing dynamic between Catra and Marshmallow. “My baby kept your ungrateful ass safe! God, who taught you how to drive?”

“A megalomaniac drug lord and the car wouldn’t have gone into the ditch if your stupid airbag deflated so I could reach the goddamn steering wheel!”

“Anyways, Marshmallow got a call from roadside assistance about the crash at the party. We showed up pretty much just as the paramedics did. Our timing has just been so uncanny lately!” laughed Scorpia, one hand on her hip and the other holding a can of RC Cola. 

_ At least Scorpia and Marshmallow were there for her.  _ Adora exhaled, hugging herself.  _ But why didn’t you call me?  _

_ Perhaps you were right. You simply aren’t as important to her as she is to you... _ mocked the shadow, still lingering with an impressive strength in the forefront of her mind.

“How long were you in the ditch?” asked Bow, cracking open his RC Cola and taking a sip.

Catra sunk in her chair and her eyes flicked away, sending a strike of worry through Adora’s heart. “I uh...IdunnoIkindapassedout?”

“Huh?” Bow pulled away from his soda.

“She said she passed out!” shouted Marshmallow in compensation. Compensation Catra didn’t want apparently, if the shriveled and embarrassed expression on her face was any indication. “Y’all, this child passed out from the pain of breaking her arm and didn’t wake up until a paramedic was shining a flashlight in her face. It was hysterical!”

_ Passed out from the pain? That’s just like the- _

_ The water heater pipe breaking,  _ the shadow intoned,  _ which I believe was  _ also  _ your doing? _

“Hysterical? Is that how you feel Marshmallow?” Catra’s voice had gotten real low, “Why don’t I break  _ your  _ arm, and then we’ll see who’s laughing?” 

“Don’t make me take these earrings out, Catra!”

“Oh,  _ I’ll  _ take those ugly motherfuckers out myself-”

“Okay, wait a second!” Glimmer’s loud, high pitched interruption broke off the impending cat fight while meanwhile, Adora heart began to deflate.  _ A drag queen’s earrings? That’s all she has to say? I almost lost her!  _ “There’s still something I don’t understand.  _ Why  _ couldn’t we find you in the hospital’s computer system? We looked for you like a million times!”

“Huh?” Catra stared at them point blank, casted arm up and shielding herself from any coming Marshmallow attack. 

“Your name isn’t anywhere in our records, darling,” Angella explained.

As it dawned on them what the hospital administrator was saying, Catra, Marshmallow, and Scorpia all shared a knowing, albeit semi annoyed look. “So  _ that’s  _ what Entrapta was doing after she stopped fucking with the X-ray machines,” Catra marveled like it was the most inconvenient yet predictable turn of events.

“Wait,  _ Entrapta _ ?!” Bow practically did a spit take from his can of soda. 

“Yeah, she’s over at the nurses’ station” Scorpia pointed down the hall before frowning, “or she was…”

“Entrapta? Your old friend who got expelled from University?” asked Angella.

“Oh my God, she must’ve hacked the system!” Bow realized, his eyebrows flying up and his jaw dropping. “That’s why your iPad’s been on the fritz, Angella! I mean, if anyone can get past a firewall like this one, it’s probably Entrapta. She did all the time at Bright Moon U.”

“What possible explanation could your friend have for erasing a patient from the computer system? Does she understand how  _ dangerous  _ that is?” 

“Probably not.” Bow shrugged as a feeble answer for Angella.

“Oh  _ definitely  _ not,” smirked Catra. 

“There will be consequences for this!”  _ Why is everyone getting to have their moment but me? Ugh, can’t they just leave me and Catra alone? I’m so tired.  _ “I don’t where Entrapta is but she is going to answer to me eventually!”

Head cocking as she continued staring in the direction where she last saw Entrapta, Scorpia replied, “Why don’t you just ask her when she gets down the hall?”

“When she wha-”

_ WHAM! _

Bow never finished his sentence. Because as Scorpia was telling Angella her answers were only a couple feet away, a sound emitting from the floor began to increase in both sound and speed, and before anyone could yell “Look out!” Bow was getting flattened, his soda flying everywhere and on everyone, by a runaway rolly wheel chair, with Entrapta spinning around it in the middle. 

“Holy shit!”

“God damn it, there’s soda in my wig!”

“Bow!” 

Flinching once again, Adora watched with tired eyes as Glimmer ran to the pile of limbs- both human and chair- and purple hair (was that silly string?) that had not two seconds ago been where Bow was standing. Scorpia dove in for Entrapta, sliding on the yellow ribbons of her dress through dark colored soda into the pile, only for a wheel to whack her in the forehead. Then, just as Glimmer was pulling the seat of the rolly wheel chair off of Bow’s face, Entrapta popped up, protective goggles on and all, proclaiming, “Ah ha! Just as I suspected! Doubling my speed increased velocity allowing me to rely purely on inertia-”

“Oww _ wwwww.” _

“Oh! Bow! I didn’t see you down there!”

“Entrapta! You could’ve  _ killed  _ him!”

“Glimmer, you’re here too! How is your smart oven doing?”

“Hey,” Catra reached out with her foot and whacked Entrapta on the shoulder, “the _hospital Administrator,_ a.k.a. the boss of this place would like to know why you were fucking with their computers.”

“Scorpia, can you go get Bow some ice?” Glimmer was saying.

“Sure thing, purple hair!”

Entrapta yanked her goggles onto her forehead and tilted her head in confusion. “I didn’t  _ fuck  _ with hospital computers. I was conducting an experiment concerning the efficiency of the staff, who are for the most part still using AOL emails, Ms. Hospital Administrator. The results so far have been  _ riveting! _ ”

“Oh my Lord,” Angella breathed, “you made up that young woman in surgery, didn’t you? You hacked Dr. Lake's files and wrote she was in critical care”

“Of course! What else would I be doing while Catra got her bones reset? Out of curiosity, I created a Jane Doe to put in the system to see how nurses and doctors would react to her. My original hypothesis proposed that the staff would search for her body within these very corridors, yet without having laid eyes on this counterfeit Jane Doe, they prepared a room to operate on her! I have now come to the ground breaking conclusion that the Bright Moon hospitals operate much like a beehive, taking orders from the queen- the computer system- without ever needing physical proof-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Catra kicked Entrapta with her boot again, stopping her explanation full force, “psychology, physics, placebos, blah blah blah. What about  _ me?  _ Why can’t anyone find me in the system, what did you do Entrapta?”

“Oh, I just erased your file from the system so it would cancel your bill. Well, for all the services rendered  _ in _ the hospital, you still have to pay for the ambulance.”

Catra flew to the edge of her seat and grabbed Entrapta by the shoulder with her good hand. “Seriously?”

_ I can’t believe her. She passes out in a ditch and all she cares about is that she doesn’t have to pay her stupid hospital bill?  _ Adora sighed. She was just too tired for this. Feeling was beginning to take its rightful place in her system, feelings of confusion and anger and  _ relief  _ all competing to have the spotlight against her exhaustion now that the shock was finally wearing off. Catra… Catra was okay. Here she was, sarcastic and safe as ever, pestering Entrapta like the night hadn’t changed her in the slightest. And that broke Adora’s heart. Because how could she keep taking beatings like this and still stand? How could she not know how much she had scared her?

Those thoughts were not to dwell on, not when Catra’s beautiful, and still squeaky, laughter filled the hospital hall and made Adora’s heart skip a beat. Catra was  _ okay. _

Adora just wished she could say the same about herself. 

“So I’m still going to have to pay for that dumb ambulance ride? Fuck, I can’t believe you and Scorpia made me get in that ambulance!” As Adora could feel her knees begin to buckle and a lump begin to from her throat, Catra was mouthing off to Marshmallow again.

“What can I say?” Marshmallow brushed her off. “That paramedic was hot, sue me.”

“Yeah, I fucking might! Ugh, you- you are helping me pay this off! I don’t have health insurance, remember?” growled Catra.

Adora took a raspy breath, placing a shaky hand against her throat. Okay, now it was looking like she might faint. Or have a panic attack. Probably just faint, but at least that meant some rest was in her uncertain future. She could feel a meltdown on the horizon and as the adrenaline slowly drained from her system, she knew she should probably be making an exit, and fast. Once Catra was ready to talk, then they’d talk. Provided Adora didn’t hit her head while passed out and wake up in a hospital room of her own. 

But as Adora tried to find the strength to turn away from the sight of Catra, Marshmallow was raising a painted eyebrow and turning her sass up to eleven. “Don’t you work for Uber?”

“Yeah, and?” scoffed Catra. Adora couldn’t make herself turn away, worried she would blink and Catra would gone again. God, she was gonna faint in front of all her friends, and her friend’s mom, and a very judgemental drag queen-

“Then you have insurance,” Marshmallow deadpanned.

“What? Are you shitting me- what do you mean _ I _ have insurance?”

Adora didn’t know why  _ that  _ right there was what broke her. It was just Catra confused about the status of her insurance, so why was the blow that cracked the damn and brought a surge of tears to her eyes? She had promised herself at the beginning of the night that she wouldn’t cry, that she was stronger than that, and somehow that promise survived their broken date and the news of Catra’s untimely “death.” The promised survived the sight of her just when Adora thought she was gone. But now? To hear her speak in a way that was just so  _ her,  _ from the tone, to the words, to the attitude, to her  _ voice… _

It was everything about Catra that Adora thought she’d lost.

Stifling a quiet sob, because this was the  _ last _ place and  _ last  _ group of people she wanted to break down in front of, Adora covered her mouth as warm tears slid down the backs of her shaking hands. This was what is was to love, to desire and want. It was to covet loss. And Adora had so much to lose and what she had to lose was sitting right in front of her with her arm in a sling and her hand in a cast. 

Catra meant so much to Adora and she didn’t even know.

“Adora?” Catra’s said her name so softly and so full of worry that for a second Adora didn’t think it was real. Using the backs of her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes, she prayed no one had seen her mini meltdown, and that Catra had been too distracted to even remember she was in the room. But when Adora opened her blurry eyes she was met with a different and much more horrifying scene. 

_ Oh, God. _

_ Everyone _ was staring at her. Bow with a bag of ice on his head. Two women in strange costumes she barely knew. Angella with her lips pursed. Glimmer making the same exact expression. And Catra. Just looking up at her with blue and golden irises that could’ve held Adora’s whole world. “Adora?”

Oh,  _ crap  _ Catra was actually saying her name. Was she still crying? Adora drifted her fingertips over her cheek, hoping to any god that hadn’t turned their back on her that she wasn’t crying in front of Catra,  _ again _ . Only the treacherous tears were still dripping down her face with the threat to never stop. And just as she was pinching her eyes shut, forcing herself to take a deep breath, and placing her hands over her mouth, she felt a warmth around her wrists and stiletto nails ghost her skin.

_ Catra.  _ She’d actually gotten out of the chair to come to her side.

“You’re not crying over  _ me _ again, are you?”

Adora laughed despite herself, she  _ really  _ laughed, before wiping the mix of snot and tears from her face. She was, wasn’t she? Crying over Catra again? The only constant in her life lately. Making herself take another deep breath, Adora relaxed her fingers over Catra’s. Then she opened her eyes into the beautiful, split ones before her. “You know, if you didn’t want to go out without me you could’ve just said so! You didn’t have to go crash Marshmallow’s car to get out of dating me.”  

“I’m guessing it would take a whole lot more to get away from you permanently, Princess.” Catra chuckled, moving to wipe a tear from Adora’s cheek. 

“Yeah _dying_ ,” Adora shot back. She was smiling for the first time in _hours_ as Catra’s forehead came to rest on hers, “I swear to God, Catra, if you scare me like that again…”

“I know, I know. Then it will  _ really _ be over.”

Catra’s eyes fluttered closed, and Adora found herself wrapping her arms around her neck.  _ Wow her eyelashes are so beautiful. She’s just so beautiful. And she’s still here.  _ “That was shitty of me, Adora, and I want to say it won’t happen again, but I’m really, really good at crashing cars. Like the fucking best.”

“And here I thought you were supposed to be a  _ good  _ driver, Catra,” she whispered against her skin. 

“Oh screw you, Adora, I am a good driver!” Catra protested with a squeal-like giggle and light jab of her nails in Adora’s stomach. “It’s not my fault your city is the absolute worst!”

For the next few seconds, Adora just listened to the echo of her voice ringing in her ears. She wanted to get lost in it, to never lose it, to never let go of what was real and what was in front of her. So she pulled Catra closer. “I thought I’d lost you.” 

“I’m not the only one who is hard to get rid of, Adora.” Catra cupped her cheek with her good hand, “Honestly I’m still just trying to wrap my head around why you even came here. Like, why not just wait for a phone call? Why drive all the way to this dump just for- for me?” she pulled away just for a second, a hesitant, delicate look on her face. 

“I couldn’t wait for a phone call, Catra. I couldn’t wait for an answer, not when I’ve spent too much time waiting. Catra, you just mean  _ so  _ much to me, and I need you to know that. I’m  _ so  _ glad you found me again, I- I,” Adora sighed when the corners of Catra’s mouth lifted up in that cocky way of hers. Her anxiety was right, Catra was going to laugh at her.Why was her confidence in her words always threatening to fail her in the most important moments? So much for all that mental rehearsal, or a major book deal. Catra reduced to her to a stuttering, snotty mess searching desperately for the right way to say  _ please don’t ever leave me.  _ “Catra- okay, I guess I overreacted and went off the deep end tonight, but I just couldn’t-”

“Wait, so you freaked out and dragged Bow and Glimmer all this way just to make sure  _ I _ was okay?” Catra asked her, stroking her cheek, smiling for real this time. With the joy and wonder Adora could see in her own reflection in Catra’s eyes. And it was everything.

“ _ Duh,  _ Catra.” Catra looked up as she spoke. “It’s you. I’d do anything for you.”

“Anything?” She bit her lip, pulling Adora closer.

“Yes, anything, I mean-just no more dying or accidents or injuries, okay-”

“Shut up and kiss me, Princess.” 

Catra didn’t wait for Adora to take the last step. No, she closed what little distance there was between them and melted into Adora, their lips colliding as the rest of the world ceased to exist around them. ‘Cause it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this.

_ Is this really happening? _ Euphoria burst within Adora’s chest, her heart beating against Catra’s, as she wove her shaking fingers through the soft curls she’d been dreaming about. Like two pieces of a puzzle torn apart long ago falling into place, their lips pressed together, chasing and learning each other. Catra’s hand and cast found Adora’s hips, her desperation to have a negative distance between them so evident in her electrifying touch. Noses brushing, Adora couldn’t help but smile against her lips.

_ She tastes like cinnamon.  _

Adora didn’t want to let go, didn’t want to pull away from Catra, but the physical demand to breathe soon beat out her need to never stop kissing this woman, ever. She would have to thank her lucky stars- because this kiss definitely proved she had some- that Catra pulled away at the same time she did, or else she would have missed the look of pure wonder in those beautiful split eyes of hers. Giggling, Adora twirled one of Catra’s curls around her finger. 

_ Bye bye depression,  _ Adora thought rather wistfully as she marveled in their softness. She wasn’t sure what she loved more; the curls or the head they were on.

Catra ran her tongue over her lips. “How long have you been gunning for my hair?”

“Since the first night,” Adora admitted, her nose brushing against Catra’s.

This earned her an eye roll. And another smile. “Yeah, well, at least you can use both hands.”

_ God, I can’t wait until she’s running her hands through my hair.  _ She wasn’t proud of it, but she almost shamelessly yanked her hair tie right then and there. Catra just stared at her with that crooked smile, but Adora didn’t get to take her in as her long, not before she was greedily pulling her in again.

Bow told Adora later, when they managed to pull Catra and Adora apart and convince them it was time to go home, or Cinco de Mayo was gonna become Cinco de Six (Scorpia didn’t know the spanish word for six), that everyone- Scorpia, Entrapta, Bow, Glimmer, even Angella and Marshmallow who both had to be filled in later, as well as random passersby- cheered  _ both _ times Catra kissed Adora, but Adora only actually remembered the cheering the second time. Maybe because she wasn’t so caught off guard.

Or maybe because she was ready to accept that this was real, the girl she was holding her arms and whose lips tasted like cinnamon and salt. And maybe, just maybe, Adora felt she had done something right for once. 

All those weeks ago, she got in Catra’s car.

_

Catra crashed the fucking car.

After weeks of driving herself batshit crazy over a poorly formed metaphor that this rocky relationship she had with Adora was just like the feelings of freedom and wholeness she’d found in Hordak’s sports car traveling 90 miles an hour down that empty Arizona highway, Catra drove the  _ actual  _ car, the one she was  _ physically _ confined too, straight into a ditch full of dirt. And yeah, curiosity in the end didn’t kill her, but fucked her up and left her with a broken arm and bruised forehead. 

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her traumatized ass. Also, it was a bitch.

“At least Uber didn’t fire me,” grumbled Catra as she threw her leg up on her bed (ugh, these pants were so hard to move in! She better look smoking hot in them or else she was officially suing Target) ready to wrestle with her new boots and the worst zipper to exist the history of ever. To her surprise, the zipper closed without putting up much of a fight. The boots, it turned out, fit perfectly. Scorpia was right. “Huh.” Catra raised an eyebrow.

Being the Patron Saints of Convenient Capitalism that they were, Uber looked the other way on the whole ‘victim of a drunk driving accident while on the clock’ incident. Catra seriously suspected that Entrapta’s sneaky little trick of deleting her medical bill (which, for some reason, Sparkles’ prissy mom let her get away with), plus the fact she didn’t have a passenger capable of suing them, had something to do with their newfound compassion and lienience. Bitching and bellyaching over the phone, some guy from the company named Gary promised the insurance would cover the  _ ridiculous _ ambulance fee and told her they looked forward to continuing to work with her. 

Boots on, matching the rest of her “date night outfit” (Scorpia’s cheesy words, not hers), Catra moved to grab her jacket from the other side of her bed. It slid on and right over her white cast as she’d gotten used to dealing with the dumb obstruction. God, that thing was frustrating. And it was on her good hand too!

_ “She’s got two fractures in her radius and one in her ulna,”  _ Catra remembered Scorpia telling Bow and Glimmer back at the hospital. Sort of remembered. She was tired as fuck, her head buried Adora’s neck, their fingers laced loosely together as Adora held her through the joyous sensation that was her pain meds wearing off. Just like she did after the water heater broke, but this time, Catra had  _ no  _ intention of ever letting this dork go. Not when that dork could  _ kiss,  _ holy fuck.  _ “The doctor said she’s gotta be in the cast seven to twelve weeks.” _

Seven to twelve weeks in this stupid, ugly thing (Catra, before anyone could make the sick suggestion to sign her cast- what was she, 13?- found every sharpie in the apartment and took to the blank canvas she’d be stuck with for the rest of god damn time it seemed, drawing a cacophony of wicked designs to make the gross holder of arm sweat more tolerable to look at; of course, Scorpia walked on in her in that exact moment, holding a pack of rainbow sharpies she bought at MegaMart for this  _ very _ thing and got her feelings hurt, so amongst the jungle of badass black ink, Scorpia’s signature appeared in bright pink at the edge of her cast). Seven to twelve weeks, as long as Catra managed to not mess it up worse by trying to use it. Just the doctor telling her not to try anything made her want to try  _ everything  _ out of pure spite. 

But Catra also wanted to be out of the cast by the time her summer semester started at the end of June. Thank God Julien was cool about the whole thing. Guess flexibility ran in his family. The whole car wreck threw a wrench in a  _ lot  _ of things, and her apprenticeship at his shop would be one of them.  

Seven weeks. She could do that right? How long had it been, like six days? Catra survived like full week now of showering with it and sleeping with it and trying to draw.

Adora still didn’t know. About art school or about the apprenticeship she’d landed over on the upper west side or the familial connection Catra found herself caught between. Dying to see that shocked- and maybe even proud- look on Adora’s face when she heard Catra had found a way to pay for it herself, Catra was in awe she’d managed to keep her mouth shut since Julien’s call, still attached to the idea of breaking the exciting news to her in the romantic atmosphere of the restaurant. It’s not like they’d been ignoring each other since the crash; kind of the opposite, actually. And that wasn’t even Adora being a nervous wreck or forcing herself on her because she wanted to “take care of her” or some other heroic type bullshit. Now that Catra knew Adora wanted her just like she did, she’d fallen back into a pattern of clinginess, seeking comfort in the other woman’s proximity. Because of this clinginess, Adora had been over to her apartment all week so they could “work on She Ra.”

Catra almost let something about her surprise slip when they were at the hospital. At some point, Scorpia and Bow decided to take a trip down to the hospital cafeteria (“Catra, Adora, you wanna come?” asked Bow, only to learn Catra was willing to hiss at anyone who tried to come at Adora while she was trying to rest and that Catra also thought cafeteria was the most disgusting thing on the planet), because they had “a lot of catching up to do,” whatever the hell that meant, and Glimmer went to go lay down in her mom’s office, making a tired request to come get her when- and if- they planned to go home. Marshmallow had bolted at least an hour ago, thank  _ God _ . Catra didn’t know if some other queen came to get her or she took a bus, but she didn’t care enough to find out. For the first time since they’d collapsed into the chairs by the vending machine after their public makeout session, she and Adora were alone, and with Adora struggling to keep her eyes open as Catra played with her ponytail, she wasn’t sure if she’d even hear her drop the bomb, “Hey I’m going back to school and I got an apprenticeship and the guy who gave it to me basically promised me a job there just as long as I got my license and an associates degree, at least.”

So she was saving it for tonight. When her brain wasn’t melting and her heart wasn’t exploding from the fact that someone cared about her enough to run to see her at the hospital just because she could possibly be hurt, someone who burst into tears just at seeing her okay. 

_ “Catra, you just mean so much to me, and I need you to know that. I’m so glad you found me again.” _

_ Dummy,  _ Catra had wanted to say but they were a little bit too busy  _ not  _ talking,  _ you’re the one that found me. You’re my whole world Adora. And you did that in what, like eight weeks? You’re so fucking amazing! _

God, watch her chicken out tonight though on this date and end up making a complete ass of herself. 

Bow had made good on his promise, and with the help of his fathers, was able to pay for a makeup date at the only restaurant and bar combo in Bright Moon that wasn’t some vegan hipster hotspot, and the only place in the city Catra could stomach to spend more than forty five minutes in.  _ If Adora doesn’t like it I think I’m gonna fucking kill myself. She’s gonna lie and say she does, but she makes that face, and I’ll know, and then I’m going to try to choke on the ice in my drink. _ Just in case there was an off chance Adora hated the place, Catra’s weeks as an Uber driver meant she knew of a backup ice cream shop just right around the corner she knew would more than make up for it. 

_ I’m finally going out with Adora,  _ Catra found herself sinking down the edge of her bed, fighting a smile,  _ like on a date. Not in the car, not in the apartment, not at that park, but a real date. A real fucking date,  _ Catra threw her head back on her mattress. God damn it,  _ now _ she was smiling like an idiot, letting butterflies she’d spent weeks trying to crush under the force of her fist dance in her stomach. About time Catra stopped getting in her own way of her happiness. About time the universe stopped getting in the way of it too.

Next to her, her phone-  _ fully  _ charged since the shitty thing dying on her last Friday had played a big role in the whole she might’ve died mix up- lit up and vibrated against her skull. “That better be my ride, Rainbow,” she smirked, pushing herself off the floor, laughing at how Scorpia would be fretting about how she wrinking her outfit if she was here. Unlocking her phone revealed the exact text message she was waiting for.

_ “Your Lyft is here!”  _ Catra stopped reading right there just to roll her eyes. God, how the irony continued. It’s not like she was expecting a limousine, but c’mon! This was Rainbow’s lame attempt at getting back at her for holding him to his word. Bow and his dads called her and Adora a freaking Lyft since Catra was now without a car. That was, until Marshmallow’s was out of the shop and she bribed her with MegaMart brand falsies (Entrapta came home with weird shit stuffed in her Hatsune Miku backpack; Catra just went ahead and ignored how she got her hands on them) she passed off as the good stuff into giving her the car back so she could earn a living. If their meeting with Veronica tomorrow didn’t go to shit and She Ra got past the contract stage, then once she and Adora were taking home paychecks, she could actually buy a car of her own. And then she finally,  _ finally _ could adopt a cat.

Stuffing her phone in her pocket, Catra prepared to grab her keys and go see her girlfriend, when her eyes fell on the pair of fingerless leather gloves she always wore lying on top of her comforter. The ones that had formed a part of her armor against a world hellbent on pursuing cruelty. The ones she was wearing the night Adora came back into her life. The ones she only shed because of her cast. The ones she wore to hide her tattoo, the last remaining mention of Selena Jaurgeui in her life and in the world. 

Catra glanced down to see the ink forever written into her skin. Her fingers started to trace the familiar black lines, the undying shape of the animal her mother had loved enough to name her after, and her heart seized, aching as it beat against ribs once broken now healed.  

“Mami,” she whispered, as if she was four years old again and sitting in her lap on that bus back in Arizona.

Selena wasn’t here to see who Catra had become. Selena hadn’t been there to witness the breaking, her demise and her destruction, she wasn’t around to watch her rise despite the pain and fight because of it. Selena wasn’t around to thank Scorpia and Entrapta for taking care of her. Selena wasn’t here to meet Adora, to tell her daughter what she thought of her work in She Ra or her newly beginning career. Selena wasn’t here, wouldn’t ever be again, and yet she was. In a way. Catra, whether willingly or not, had imbued her energy into the artful marking that sunk deep into the cells of her skin, bringing her mother back to her in the only way she could. They may never know each other, but they would always have each other. 

Catra had seen to that permanently. 

_ I did that so I wouldn’t forget,  _ Catra thought as a teardrop hit the cat on her wrist,  _ so that I would always remember what she did to us, to me, and so that I wouldn’t become her.  _ These past years had blurred together, becoming one wretched fight for survival after another, littering Catra’s memory with mistakes she definitely wasn’t proud of. That’s all Catra had done since running away from Hordak. Survive, and keep surviving so she wouldn’t meet the fate of her mother. Or, until she met the fate of her mother and joined her in a place without suffering.

Now as she stood gazing at her tattoo, Catra realized she understood something that Selena had not. The suffering, the pain and agony that just never took a day off, it was  _ worth _ it. It was actually worth it! This bitch of an existence was worth living, worth participating in instead of just surviving in spite of, because the pain and the abuse, cruelty brought down by those who were weak, were  _ nothing _ compared to the love of those who were strong, who were kind. All this time Catra lived to spite those who used their hatred and their conditions as a weapon to kill her, and it was time to live for those who wanted to love her  _ unconditionally _ . 

Catra was doing this, living, breathing,  _ becoming,  _ not because she wanted to fade away clinging to a bottle of tequila and die. For the first time in a long,  _ long _ time _ ,  _ she wanted to keep living. For the chance to be better, the chance to become a master at what she loved. 

For Entrapta, for Scorpia. For Adora.

_ And _ for Selena. 

Closing her fingers into a gentle fist, Catra brought her wrist to her lips and whispered, “Te amo, Mami.”

_

_ So this was what is was like to be Adora. Always in the back and always staring at the rearview mirror… this fucking sucks, no wonder she climbed her drunk ass over the seat. _

Bright and harsh city lights bleeding through the car window and teasing her senses, Catra wiggled her nose and shut her eyes, trying to block out the boastful range of colors coming from the night life as well as the intrusive smell of oranges berating her nose. So far her Lyft driver- some Scottish guy named Rob- had had the decency not to ruin her good mood by running his mouth and forcing her to talk. His car fucking stunk, though. Catra wasn’t one to bother wasting energy leaving pointless reviews of services such as glorified taxis, but if she did, in this case her review would be a kindly worded statement to lay off the fucking citric air freshener. The night hadn’t even started and Catra feared this abuse of scents would be the end what had been so far a migraine free week. 

 _At least if I get a migraine- thanks a lot ROB-_ _Adora will be cool about it. Worry wart probably put Excedrin in her purse._

Good. Catra was out of that stuff.

Spending the thirty minute drive all the way to Bright Moon trying to block out the smell was a shitty way for the world to shift her perspective. Not that the world cared what Catra wanted; for the most part the world and universe alike altogether ignored her feelings and chose instead to have fun fucking with her. Fucking with her by putting Adora in her backseat all those weeks ago.

_ Jesus,  _ weeks  _ ago? _

God, it felt like a whole freaking lifetime had passed since that first night of awkward hostility and strained politeness, not to mention the uncomfortable realization that thirteen years had transformed them both, and yet despite all the anger and guilt they were _ still _ into each other. The only reason it probably seemed more like a million years instead of what, like a few months, was that Catra had managed to burn through every single emotion a human being- even one as fucked up as her- was capable of feeling. Right now she was happy as a damn clam ( _ wonder how long that’ll last)  _ but there was more than enough anxiety, and fear, and resentment that went along so nicely with the wonder, and hope, and dare she say, happiness? There was also enough anger to last ten lifetimes. Yeah.

In only several weeks she’d been catapulted through her every inch of her trauma, forced to reckon with the poisoned memories of growing up under the bruising, unrelenting hands of Weaver and Hordak. Their voices she’d wrestled against, their damning words she’d sought to wash herself clean of, even if it meant letting herself burn and drown in holy water. Adora and company may have succeeded in breaking down Catra’s walls, but doing so was challenging and an invitation to Weaver and Hordak to have one more chance to destroy her. For good this time. 

_ Thanks for nothing, “Mom” and “Dad.” _

Course they didn’t destroy her. Hell, they weren’t even successful in breaking her spirit the first time! Those heartless bastards tried it, they  _ really _ fucking tried it, to make her like them, to mold her into some psychological weapon dependent on their soul-sucking presence. To be someone who hurt because they were  _ weak  _ and they took pleasure in creating pain when they could not resolve their own. Duh, those idiots failed miserably. 

Because Catra wasn’t one of Weaver’s pet projects and she  _ wasn’t  _ Hordak’s daughter. If they wanted someone like them, someone to keep around so they could pass off hurt and abuse as love, then they should have stolen another little girl, one who didn’t come from a line of very pissed off and unrelenting survivors. And they should’ve tried a lot fucking harder to keep her from people like Adora.

So yeah, maybe Adora coming back into her life was proof she’d never be rid of their annoying-as-shit ghosts. But if gentle giant with a heart of gold, a brilliant hella sexy authoress, and a nerd that was probably a fucking cyber criminal thought she had a heart worth loving, then maybe they were on to something. Catra couldn’t say she was ready to stop believing in the lies her past guardians whispered to her in her nightmares and her darkest moments of doubt, but she was ready to start listening to voices that weren’t them.

 _Curiosity killed the cat,_ Hordak always said. Big fucking whoop. The joke was on him, Catra decided as Rob pulled up to the bakery and she whipped out her phone to text her girlfriend. _Not this cat, you walking cock excuse for a human._ _Satisfaction brought it back._

“Uh, this is it, miss? The Rebellion Bakery? That name’s a wee bit intense,” Rob remarked as Catra pushed her door open and stepped out.

“You seriously have  _ no  _ idea.”

Shutting the door with a flick of her wrist, Catr sauntered around Rob’s Kia Sorento and stepped onto the curb, trying to muster up the confidence to see- and be seen by- Adora. Adora, lit by the warm gold light cascading from the bakery windows, leaning on the doorway as she laughed at some argument Bow and Glimmer were having beside her. Adora, dressed in a flawless combo of red, white and grey, making Catra’s heart skip a beat as tried to take a deep breath because holy  _ fuck,  _ was she sexy and gorgeous on a level that was  _ definitely  _ illegal. Adora, her stunning smile and ocean blue eyes paralyzing Catra and drawing her in at the same time. 

Adora, her first friend and her first love. And now, her  _ girlfriend.  _ Suck it, Universe!

_ Like to tell the girl chugging tequila as fast as she fucking could wrapped up in a blanket and actively hoping her roommates would leave her alone so she could try not to die in peace what she’d be staring at like a total fucking idiot in several weeks. She’d freak, ha! I am still freaking…. _

“What’s wrong with a Long Island iced tea, Glimmer?” Bow’s whine of question broke Catra out of her stupor and she stuck her hands in her pockets.

“It’s so basic, Bow!” scoffed Glimmer. “Adora, for your sake I hope Catra knows more quality drinks. Ugh, why did I get stuck with two roommates who know  _ nothing  _ about alcohol?”

Adora’s nose wrinkled and Catra’s heart skipped another beat. That shit was probably going to be happening all night so she’d better get used to it before it drove her crazy. But it was worth it. Anything for just another moment to stare at Adora was, it so fucking was.

Of course she had to be thinking that super sappy thought just as Adora realized she was standing there. In the beat of a heart, ocean eyes met split ones, evaporating her wild storm of nerves and pulling her closer like a moon trapped in orbit. 

_ Satisfaction brought it back. _

“Hey Catra.”

Turning on the shit eating grin for Adora and Adora alone, Catra knew two could play at this game. She sure as hell wasn’t going to melt into a gooey lovestruck pile in front of two Bright Moon dipshits- sorry,  _ citizens-  _ just ‘cause Adora said her name like that. “I can’t ever seem to get you alone, can I?”

“Trust me, I’m as equally frustrated as you are.” Adora sent a cutting look back at her chaperones as she strutted away from them. Catra blinked, and Adora’s hand was now in hers, fidgeting with Sea Hawk’s friendship bracelet on her right wrist. 

“We’re just keeping her company!” protested Bow, a little too whiny for Catra’s taste.

“I’m sorry,” Glimmer stopped and stared at him, “you pulled me away from my bakery to keep Adora company? You’ve gotta be kidding me! We both know you just wanted to spy on them.”

“You know I’m paying for all of this! I gotta make sure it goes off without a hitch! Unlike last time.” He muttered the last sentence under his breath, his gaze betraying him when Catra caught him staring at her cast.  _ You know my memory was fuzzy ‘cause ended up blacking out in a ditch, but wasn’t what happened last time  _ your  _ doing?  _ Catra hoped to God her face portrayed that sentiment. 

Adora, meanwhile, had not let the aggravating presence of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass stop her from engulfing her girlfriend in her arms, pecking her on the lips as a gentle greeting. Catra smiled despite herself. For fuck’s sake, they’d only been going out like five days, she could at least keep her cool. It felt like they’d been doing this forever. 

Throwing her arms around Adora and bringing her closer (god this woman was like a magnet!), the two exchanged a devious look.  _ Turn up the PDA,  _ that evil little glint in her blue eyes told her,  _ it’s literally the only thing that will get them to go away.  _ Catra winked, running her teeth over her incisors in response. Oh Catra could turn the hell up out of the PDA. She just had one more thing to remind Bow.

“Thanks for the date, Bow! Send me your venmo info, would you? Thanks!” she teased and flashed her teeth, swinging away from Adora’s neck. Now  _ that  _ was fun. Going out with Adora had a lot of perks, but Catra could say without a doubt in her mind that tormenting the Best Friend Squad was going to be  _ hilarious!  _ And man, the feel of Adora laughing into her shoulder was worth a million fucking bucks.

Her well deserved teasing earned Catra a grumble and pout- wow, she thought  _ Adora _ was the most childish of the three- from their donor before Glimmer was rubbing his back and shaking her head in disdain. Catra swung back, meeting Adora in the middle and resting her forehead on hers. 

“You look-” Adora glanced down at her and Catra’s heart threatened to burst. This was the reaction she wanted, god damn it, could she not act like a total pussy for like, five seconds? Just enjoy that her girlfriend thought she was hot? Jesus Christ! “-just, wow. Really. I think I’m just gonna spend tonight staring at you, is that okay?”

_ Dork.  _ “Fuck yeah, it’s okay. Just keep your hands on my ass too, okay?” Catra smirked. Choosing now to comment on the fact that Adora had stuck her both of her hands - _ in front of  _ the scandalized eyes of her friends- in the back pockets of her skinny jeans was a total avoidance of her previous, semi-pathetic thirst quip, but she did enjoy watching her girlfriend’s cheeks bloom scarlet and a smile brighter than the sun break out on her lips. “You’re so beautiful,” Catra found herself whispering, “and the jacket is pretty fucking hot.”

“Now you know how I feel.” Adora’s lips grazed her own, Catra digging her stiletto nails into the red leather as-

“Get a room already!” 

“Really Sparkles?” Catra threw her head back as Adora burst out laughing. “Is it always gonna be this way? You and your little-” what was the word Marshmallow used? “-entourage?” she asked, turning back to Adora. Thank fucking God they were gonna be miles from the bakery tonight.

“We’re lucky it’s just them. I had to beg everyone else to stay inside.”  _ Yeah, that checks out.  _ Glancing back, Catra found Sea Hawk pressed against the window, Mermista daring to look up from her phone, Perfuma smiling like some creepy stalker, and Frosta imitating Sea Hawk beside him. Dumbasses all had the sense- big surprise there- to turn around the second Catra caught them and pretend as if they hadn’t been spying on something that was none of their damn business. Expect for Frosta, who either had no shame or was the only one decent enough to have some, as she chose to jump up and down and wave the second they made eye contact. 

“Oh, so we have an audience?” 

“Yep.” Adora smacked her lips, her voice sultry in way that was  _ so  _ not fair.  “Hey, you wanna give ‘em a show?”

Catra couldn’t help but make a face at this suggestion. She was just such a dork! A dork that had practically saved her life by reminding her of all the reasons she had to live and constantly kicked ass and was beautiful and sexy. Adora was a giant dork.

And Catra was the luckiest woman on the planet right now because that giant dork was  _ hers. _

“Fine. But this is for you, Princess, not  _ them.”  _

Adora smiled. Then her lips met Catra’s, not a second wasted after permission was granted, and she  _ swore _ in that moment was back in that Mustang. It was just the feeling that came with kissing Adora. Riding high on the taste of vanilla and drowning in the sensation of being whole once more. Barreling down that empty highway where absolutely nothing in the world dared hold her back as she freed herself from the shackles of her pain. There was just so much freedom to be found in love, to be found in her arms. 

Even as Catra kissed her now, she knew the road ahead was not without its own challenges. If Bright Moon had any say, it was probably still under fucking construction, taunting, “Good luck trying to crash this,  _ Catra!” _ Life had been kind enough to let them find each other once more, so who’s to say it was not going to spend the rest of their days fucking them over more with more and more obstacles. She’d say they’d both suffered enough. She knew it was never her place to say. The woods Catra prayed they’d find themselves out of might not even have a goddamn end. There were awkward and painful and tearfilled conversations to be had. And by no means were either of them done with reconciling and repenting of their pasts. God knows they’d barely even begun. 

Catra crushed Hordak’s Mustang and then in a constant state of rage and hate allowed herself be ruled by the premonition that nothing was in her control, that the world around was out for her head on a silver platter, and because nothing mattered and no one gave a damn, she was free to do whatever the fuck she wanted. Now because of the life she had found on the edge of the world’s worst city, Catra had things to lose again. So no more reckless, impulsive destruction. Not when the last thing Catra wanted to do now was fuck up what she’d created with Adora. She knew now that there were more variables in her control than was ever in her consideration; never did she ever have to be that angry, hurting fourteen year-old girl, bleeding from her nose and crying herself to sleep at night from the pain of her whiplash and healing ribs,  _ ever again. _

Breaking away from each other, Catra and Adora were met with another astounding- and necessary- round of applause from the Peanut Gallery, one loud enough to shake the glass windows of Glimmer’s bakery.  _ Oh yeah, that’s  _ never  _ gonna get old.  _ Adora chuckled under her breath, cheeks and neck still burning scarlet, and Catra just rolled her eyes, coming back to rest her forehead on her girlfriend’s.

“Bright Moon.  _ Ugh.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> congrats! you did it! you made it through the whole chapter! and the whole series!  
> first of all, thank you for indulging me. second,I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> you’re always free to yell at me here [princessofgayskull](https://princessofgayskull.tumblr.com/)
> 
> also, in closing, I would like to thank the person who beta’d these last few crazy chapters, and edited this mess in just a couple of days. Since you’re now done with this story, please do me the biggest favor and read her AMAZING story [Demons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026990/chapters/42594701)
> 
>  
> 
> It’s a fic I can’t hype enough. You won’t regret following her writing. I have so appreciated her help and her perspective. Once again, thanks for catching all those mistakes that would have truly made me look like more of an idiot than already am. And thanks for being my friend, <3
> 
> oh, you have noticed a little something: Upper West Side is now the first installment of a series!- subscribe to it here and follow me on tumblr for updates! Y
> 
> please tell me what you thought of the ending! -savannah

**Author's Note:**

> to be continued....
> 
> of course she's not done with Adora! next chapter will include more of catra and adora talking and starting to work through things . More about what happened after Mara adopted Adora will be discussed, and how they both ended up in the places they are now, and where they both want to do in when they get out of your current situations. Plus a very drunk Adora.
> 
> thank you so much for reading! please let me know what you think, it'd mean the world!!!!  
> shout out to my beta, Anna!!! thanks again so much doppelganger.
> 
> come say hi! i'm on tumblr @heliophobicsoul


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